


The Price of Victory

by Maria_Albert



Series: Paladins and Princes [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Keith (Voltron), Angst, Betrothal (both parties need not be conscious at the time), Capture, Commander Lotor, Declaration of Love (in a language they don't know), Desperate Gambles, Drama, Druid Acolyte Lotor, Emperor Lotor, Enemies to Allies, Forget about going down with this ship bring on the whole armada!, Friends and Family in Peril, Imprisonment, Keith what have you done?, M/M, Paladins in Peril, Poisoning, Rare Pairings, Realization of love, Slavery, blade of marmora, prince lotor - Freeform, servitude, slave!Matt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 54,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maria_Albert/pseuds/Maria_Albert
Summary: As a Galran Prince, Commander and Druid Acolyte, in an Empire steeped in magic, violence, deception and betrayal, Lotor is conversely one of the most powerful yet powerless beings in the universe. The simple act of rescuing a single human slave has far-reaching consequences that shatter all preconceptions and restores hope. But when Lotor has finally achieved his wildest dreams and the universe is at peace, the pillar he has built his life around is cruelly snatched from his side. Now, in an unlikely alliance with the Red Paladin, the two seek to regain all they have lost.If anyone had ever told Matt Holt that he’d become not only an alien abductee, but a modern day Helen of Troy, that his face would one day launch a thousand ships, with an alien Prince leading the massive armada, he’d have asked to analyze whatever drugs they were using for his biochemistry thesis. But that was before he was made a slave, before the enigmatic Prince Lotor rescued him and became Emperor, before four of the Paladins of Voltron were betrayed and imprisoned, and Lotor and Keith came to save them. All Matt had wanted was to be reunited with his family, to finally go home, but now the Earth is threatened with annihilation because of it.





	1. Smoke and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Point of view or time changes are marked by "0 0 0".
> 
> The first story in this series was written primarily during Season 1, to delve into Keith’s back story, the relationships in the teams, and the histories of the original Red and Blue Paladins. It takes place before canon ages were revealed: Shiro is 19 and Pidge is 16 when they first form Voltron, and Matt is also 19 at that time. This story takes place during the middle of Season 1, so the identities, details and back stories of the original Red and Blue Paladins, Keith, Thace, Zarkon and Haggar in the stories of this series also differ from Seasons 2 and 3 and beyond, though they will contain certain elements and characters. 
> 
> The second work in this series is primarily about Lotor, Matt, Sam, Thace, and the Blade of Marmora, but includes the Paladins, Rolo, Nyma, and some other familiar characters, and is in the same universe as the first story, so it shares those divergences from canon. It is, however, standalone, as the differences are outlined in notes above key chapters. It spans two years, from the capture of Shiro, Matt and Sam on Kerberos, through Shiro’s escape to Earth and the formation of the Paladins and Voltron, through the end of the War, and the aftermath and repercussions when the Paladins finally return home, which threatens the Earth with annihilation.
> 
> The Voltron: Legendary Defender characters are under copyright or license by Toei Animation, World Events Productions, Netflix, Dreamworks Animation, Studio Mir and/or others. This is a work of fanfiction, for no monetary gain. The first work was simultaneously being posted on Fanfiction.net.

Prince Lotor stood in the furthest shadows of the Imperial Box of the Arena, his body and face concealed in the hooded cloak of a Druid. He would not have dared risk either wearing the robes, though they were his, or standing here, had the Witch been anywhere near, but she was busy in her laboratory. He never thought of her by the name the others used or seldom even by the title of their biological relation. Names held power, which is why they always deprived their slaves of their names when they stole their freedom, so the power they held over them was absolute.

“The new prisoners are to fight tonight. Let us hope they don’t prove as disappointing as the last batch,” his father stated, his voice containing only the usual level of threat and censure, nothing particularly deadly.

“If I were allowed even a few days to train them, Excellency, I am certain they would be more entertaining,” Vornax’s obsequious voice foolishly promised.

“If they live, you may train them,” his father promised magnanimously, empty words from an empty heart and soul.

Even with training, it was doubtful any of the pathetically small and weak new slaves would last more than a few ticks against Myzax, the current Champion. Lotor had no desire to watch yet another night of slaughter in an endless series of them. Thankfully however, he had successfully kept his presence hidden. Lotor slipped away from the Imperial Box, past the elite warriors who guarded his father without their notice, cloaked mostly in shadow and silence, but also in a whisper of Druid magic.

He intended to head back to his quarters, but instead found himself heading down to the slave pits, to the very bowels of the arena. Here too, he traveled unnoticed, which suited his purpose: he wished to satiate his restlessness and curiosity without being observed. He had yet to see the latest batch of slaves, and he understood they were from a newly discovered species. Perhaps they might somehow prove useful to him.

There was the sound of a scuffle up ahead, a crazed cry, “I want blood!”, and the shouts of the guards and terrified whimpers of the slaves.

In a twist of smoke, Lotor teleported to the altercation. If there was a mad slave who had somehow overpowered his guards and actually escaped, there was no telling how many slaves and Galra could be injured or killed.

But fast as he was, the slave was faster. Lotor never even saw him, but from the guards’ excited babbling, the blood crazed slave had apparently entered the arena, so insanely eager to race to his doom and face the Champion that he had attacked and left a bloody child in his wake.

“Did you see that! That one’s ruthless and vicious enough that it might actually last more than a few ticks. I wish I was up top where I could bet on it, instead of down here with these vermin. Look at this one. It hasn’t even entered the arena yet, and it’s already dying,” one of the guards complained, his voice dripping with disgust and derision. “Although such a small, weak, young, worthless slave wouldn’t have lasted two ticks in the arena in any case.”

_“Small, weak, young, worthless.”_

Lotor stilled, momentarily ceasing to breathe. How many times had he heard those very same words from his father, seen those same thoughts echoed in the faces around him, of those who dared not criticize him as openly? Flawed as he was, as belittled by his father as he might be, none would risk Emperor Zarkon’s wrath. It was one thing for the Emperor to despise and criticize his own son. For others to do so invoked words like “treason”.

“Why waste another day's rations on it? We should just kill it now. It will die soon anyway, now that it’s wounded,” the other guard suggested, lazily raising his sword over the fallen slave.

“Wait! I’m valuable, a scientist, technician, mechanic!” the previously cowering creature spoke, not a child after all but a young man, apparently, though he spoke shrilly as well as rapidly. He was still on the floor, still quaking in pain and terror, but now his right arm was raised defensively in front of his face and torso, and there was desperate fire in his eyes as well as the intelligence his words had implied. Sadly, in another moment, he’d lose both his arm and his life.

“Hold!” Lotor commanded, gliding between the slave and the guard, before he had time to rationally consider what he was doing, the wildness of both his father’s and mother’s blood once again drowning out his calculating intellect and threatening to bring him to ruin. He silently cursed his parentage even as the guard who had been threatening the young alien and the other guards near him jerked back in fear at the sight of his Druidic robes.

“As you have no use for this slave, you will give him to us,” Lotor ordered, using the imperial “us”, indicating himself, not the Druids, though the guards would naturally assume otherwise, as his face was yet cloaked, his sibilant voice purposefully misleading and concealing.

The guard drew back further, lowering his sword, but not sheathing it, his grip tightening on the hilt in his fear.

“Rise,” Lotor commanded the slave.

The young male scrambled shakily to his feet, staggering and almost falling again, but recovering and standing, though swaying.

“Walk,” Lotor commanded, pointing a razor nailed finger down the corridor.

The slave visibly swallowed, and worried his lower lip with his teeth, but then he began to move, though he was more lurching than walking.

Lotor glided behind him, soundlessly. They were nearly at the end of the corridor when Lotor heard one of the guards prematurely exhale in relief. “Foolish child. It would have been better off dead.”

From the sudden inhalation at his side, Lotor was certain the slave had heard as well, and not for the first time cursed the translating technology in the imbedded communications systems of the corridors. It enabled them to understand the potentially rebellious words of their slaves, but likewise enabled the slaves to understand them as well, useful when voicing commands, but just as often counterproductive.

Lotor pretended not to hear the implied insult to the Druids. He would not tarnish saving a life by taking others, though were his mother to hear, she would certainly have struck down not only the guard who spoke, but any non-Druid within earshot of such blasphemy, slave or guard alike.

“If you can remain conscious, upright and moving long enough to reach my sanctuary, your life will be spared and your injury healed,” Lotor bargained, whispering his promise so softly that only the slave might hear.

“Yes sir,” the young man replied, stiffening, his movement improving, if only minutely.

So, this slave had some knowledge of obedience to commands, likely a parent’s, as it was extremely doubtful he had any sort of military training, given his obvious frailty, though perhaps that was a result of his captivity. It certainly would be too much to hope for that he might have some concept of a Life Debt, though he was about to learn.

0 0 0

Matt had no idea why the cloaked figure had rescued him from imminent death at the hands of the guard. His rescue seemed as surreal as their capture, as being torn away from his father and made a slave, as Shiro… he bit back a sob. Shiro had attacked him, wounded him, he’d gone mad and… except he hadn’t. At the last moment, there had been desperation, regret, and apology in his eyes, and he’d told him to take care of his father. _Could he have done what he did to protect me somehow, both of us?_

Whatever Shiro’s intentions, he’d miscalculated, or slipped maybe. _Could that have been from his head injury?_ Unlike him and his dad, they’d clubbed Shiro unconscious, not once, but twice.

_What if he has a concussion? They can make your personality change and affect your balance and coordination. It wasn’t his fault he hurt me so badly, I’m sure it wasn’t. We’ve been best friends for five years. The only one he’s closer to is Keith, and he’s more like Shiro’s brother._

Thinking about Shiro instead of his own exhaustion and weakness had at least gotten him down a few of the corridors. But now his focus was back on himself and his own injury, and the pain in his chest was making it hard to breathe, let alone move. But the alien in the robe needed him to walk; he’d promised to heal him if he did. Matt didn’t know whether or not he could believe him, but he needed to be healed in order to find and save his father, so he couldn’t risk alienating his rescuer. _Alienating the alien_.

Matt almost giggled and realized he was either becoming hysterical, losing his mind, or the blood loss was worse than he realized and he was becoming giddy from it. He was certainly starting to feel more and more disconnected from reality, as he stumbled and staggered along the endless branching corridors.

_Damn it. I should have tried to remember where we turned, how to get back to the slave pens, in case my father is there somewhere._

He took another step, but it was as if an abyss had opened under his feet, or the world had tilted, he was falling, helpless to right himself, stop himself. _No, no, no! I’m close, I must be. He’ll heal me! Move, you stupid body!_

Claws scratched the back of his neck, the unexpected bite of pain bringing momentary focus, enough to realize the bulk of his weight was now being held by the bunched fabric of his slave clothes, like a kitten being held by the scruff of its neck. He distantly heard what was clearly a curse, from the way it was uttered, and the swish of an opening door, and then he was pushed forwards, into what had moments ago looked like a solid wall.

The door closed behind them, just as Matt’s legs gave out entirely. He expected to fall hard, but something caught him before he hit the floor.

“Technically you made it to the door, so our bargain stands, even if you cannot. I will heal you,” the cloaked figure promised, only now his voice was no longer hissing and sinister, but strong, if cold and forbidding.

“And then, you will bathe, we will burn these parasite infested rags, and I will teach you what it means to serve me,” the alien intoned solemnly and intimidatingly.

“Yes, master,” Matt mumbled, half seriously, half sarcastically, to combat the fear that he had just gone from the frying pan and into the fire, and he was about to get incinerated. Then terrifyingly, thankfully, all light and thought winked out.


	2. Not What I Expected

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to post this a few days early. Enjoy!

Lotor eyed his new servant in surprise, suspicion and some alarm as he slumped lifelessly under his hand, the thin fabric of his ragged tunic tearing from his weight, negligible as it might be. In spite of his instinctive mistrust, he caught the young man under his shoulder with his right hand, ready to attack with his left if this was some sort of feint, rather than a true faint, but the former slave truly appeared to be unconscious.

He repositioned his right arm to support his back and then swept his left under his legs and lifted. The young man was dismayingly light weight, even for his thin frame. Either the young of his species were by nature fragile or this one had already been sickly, but he’d gladly take weak, intelligent, and hopefully loyal over strong, brutish, and vicious any day.

He carried the limp young man into his own personal fresher, laying him down on the bottom of the bathing pool, where he would swab clean his injury with antiseptic. He needed the wounded skin and tissue to be clean, before artificially inducing regeneration, if it was to heal properly, and with minimal input of his own energy. Normally, of course, he’d do this in a bed, but his new servant needed to be thoroughly bathed and his parasites killed before he would lay him upon the pristine bed of the never before used servant’s quarters that were part of his own suite of rooms, quarters meant to used by an Acolyte who served him, once he became a full-fledged Druid.

For the first time, he was grateful his mother had insisted upon Druid’s chambers for him, in spite of his current lower standing as an Acolyte. He had found the meditation chamber a needless extravagance, though he admitted the personal galley had been appreciated. Unlike the Druids who worshipped his mother far more than they ever would honor Ashwan, he kept strictly to the vegetarian ideals of their religion. Galra as a rule were omnivorous, as were Altaeans, though the former tended to relish meat as much as the Altaeans preferred plant life. His mother’s tastes had always been more Galran than Altaean in many ways.

He stripped the slave, tossing the pathetic excuse for clothing it wore into the incinerator chute, rather than either the laundry or recycling chutes, and gave a cursory inspection to his new servant. His skin wasn’t uniformly dirty. What had been covered by the tunic was a few shades lighter and somewhat cleaner than his hands and face, and surprisingly supple and unmarred by scars. Though he was young, and newly caught, so perhaps he should have expected that.

Externally, at least, there were no additional injuries. His physiology was remarkably similar to Galran and Altaean and a number of other bilateral species: 8-12 fingers, 4-8 appendages, 2-4 eyes and auditory receptors, with a single olfactory receptor and mouth. His ears were shell like but small and oddly rounded. His hearing would likely be limited because of it, though hopefully not too impaired. Reproductively he appeared similar as well.

He had already known he was male, but his inspection confirmed it: his mother had banned female gladiators from the arena millennia ago as a waste of resources, after the deaths of a number of pregnant slaves and their unborn young, following a few particularly gruesome battles. Visual inspection complete, he placed his hand over the young alien’s forehead, using a modicum of his power, to ensure his new servant would continue to sleep, and then he dispassionately began cleaning the long, ugly sword slash.

Once he was done swabbing away the blood, saying the familiar healing prayer for forgiveness by rote for the necessary taking of the lives of the bacteria and parasites which had already flocked to the wound, he held his hands over the bony chest, pooling his quintessence in his hands and slowly releasing it through his palms, the way he had been taught, though his teachers had likely never expected him to squander the precious gift of his own life force upon an alien servant. He would not deplete himself beyond the safety margins he had set, of course. He could not afford to ever appear weak before either of his parents, and there was no way of telling when he would next see them. Neither tended to announce their infrequent demands for his presence in advance.

Lotor felt severed muscle and tendon draw together, seeking tendrils meshing and merging, and then finally, the skin above seam shut. He surprised himself by lingering over the wound, expending the extra energy to ensure every trace of the injury vanished, instead of leaving a practical though unsightly scar. In resignedly amused self-deprecation, he realized that apparently his vanity extended to his servant’s, as well as his own form. Still, he ran his index finger lightly over the healed injury, the direct contact insuring every last cell was restored. Supple and soft, the skin felt more Altaean than Galran, though it was far more delicate than either. He withdrew his hand. It would be a challenge to keep his new servant intact in the harsh environment he now found himself in.

He pulled out soaps and oils and began bathing his new servant, watching in horrified fascination as the parasites in his skin and hair writhed and died, reciting the bathing prayer more than once. Once his charge was repeatedly soaped and rinsed, he oiled him, and then wrapped him in thick towels and carried him to the servant’s bed. He pulled off all the towels, save for the one under his head, and studied him more leisurely this time. For an alien, he truly was of similar body type to both his father’s and mother’s people, particularly his mother’s, and not ill formed. In fact, though his body currently lacked muscle mass, it could likely be toned, and facially, his appearance was somewhat pleasing to the eye, though Ashwan encouraged finding the beauty in the unfamiliar, the different, the wondrous diversity that existed within creation.

Lotor snorted in derision, as he headed back to his fresher, to clean the filth of the slave pens and his servant from his skin. In an ideal universe, perhaps such differences might truly be celebrated. In his father’s empire, unique and different were synonymous with inferior and enslaved.

He entered the fresher, and stripped off his Druid robes, the Galran commander uniform beneath them, and his undergarments, pushing everything into the laundry chute. As always, he stood for a critical moment, studying his face, his body, and finding the latter lacking. No matter how hard he worked to tone his body, he would never grow taller, nor broader in the shoulders, he would never have either the muscle mass of his father or the former grace of his mother.

Worst of all, was his face. He had his father’s strength of cheekbones and chin, and what had once been his mother’s exquisite features, before age, bitterness, hatred and quintessence addiction had ravaged her features. Such elegant beauty was valued in a consort, a concubine, an Empress or Princess, but was wasted on a Prince, where only martial skill and strength mattered.

When he was younger, he’d hoped his face might become scarred in battle, but twice now he’d carefully healed such injuries to ensure the visage he despaired of remained unmarred, his foolish pride and vanity overriding his inborn instinct of self-preservation. Considering he seldom ventured outside his chambers without his concealing hooded robe, he was twice as foolish for his misguided hubris. Though he could also count two occasions when he had been prone at his father’s feet, his face raised in supplication for forgiveness for his latest perceived transgression or failure, when he was certain his father had spared him only because he had once loved the face his own was crafted from.

He had learned from his parents’ mistakes. He would never love so much, lose so much, have his most cherished dream contorted and twisted into a hideous nightmare of conniving, codependent hatred. Ashwan did not preach celibacy, far from it: he embraced love as he celebrated diversity, and life. But thankfully, he did not forbid celibacy either. Though why he should, now of all times, be wasting time with such inconsequential thoughts was beyond him.

Lotor began soaping himself vigorously, welcoming the water, the warmth, the heady scent, the hedonistic feel and smell, reveling in it. He had so far managed to survive his rash, impulsive decision to save the slave, to burden himself with a servant that would likely become a target all too quickly. He scowled, as the enormity of what he had committed to engulfed him, cursing himself for a fool. _Why must every small victory contain within it the potential for a massive defeat?_

0 0 0

Matt awoke languidly, instead of instantly, as usual, for some strange reason his eager mind not already clamoring to do twelve things at once. He stared at the featureless metal ceiling. _Crap. I must be sick again,_ he realized in resignation. He’d been healthy as a child, but had overextended himself a number of times in the Garrison Academy, in spite of his roommate’s- _Shiro!_ He sat bolt upright, his hand flying protectively to his chest, eyes casting about wildly, and froze.

He wasn’t alone, but that wasn’t Shiro. _Holy shit, he’s hot._ Matt’s realized his first thought upon seeing his new captor uncloaked and remembering Shiro’s attack was entirely ridiculous, considering his precarious position. He’d always thought of Shiro as hot too, almost too pretty to ever be called merely handsome, but that was before he’d seen his face twisted in mindless fury, like a monster from one of the holos they used to watch together in their dorm.

This alien was different than the other ones he’d seen in power, the militant purple fanged furry ones. He looked more like an Elven prince, though his skin was neither milky pale nor gunmetal grey or black as a Drow Elf’s, but instead the same pale purple as the other aliens, though his hair was long and pure white and his eyes amber, like one of the dark elves. _But not evil, right? Because he saved me and…_

Matt’s glance shot down to his bare chest. _Holy crap! He did it, he healed me, there’s not even a scar._ “But I didn’t make it through the door, did I?” Matt asked, perplexed, because he’d unintentionally broken the terms of their agreement when he’d passed out within sight of safety. Although wait, hadn’t the alien said-?

“If you’re going to rudely ask such a question, instead of properly thanking me for sparing your life, or even introducing yourself like a civilized being, you should at least look like you’re going to pay attention to the answer,” his rescuer snapped, sounding and now looking more than a little annoyed.

“Oh shit! I mean sorry, I’m sorry. Really. I just… I don’t really have the best social skills. My dad’s the one who- Dad! My father! He was captured too, with us, only I haven’t seen him since, he wasn’t taken to those cells with us, not that I saw and- Crap. I’m doing it again.” He slipped out of the bed and stood, relieved to find that, though he was barefoot and shirtless, he was wearing pants, grey ones, made of some sort of soft material. “Thank you. For saving my life, for keeping that guard from killing me and healing me and how are you even speaking English? You must have translator technology or something, right? Unless you’re telepathic, which I don’t think you are, I hope that’s not it, because if you think listening to what comes out of my mouth is bad, you should hear what’s in my head. Oh, and I’m Matt Holt, a scientist, organic chemist and xenobiologist, from Earth, although I was captured on Kerberos.”

He stopped there, hoping he hadn’t been speaking too quickly for him to understand and that he hadn’t aggravated his new captor or boss or master or whatever too much, because if he’d wanted a slave with a filter, he’d picked the wrong person. Katie would have- _Thank God she’s safe on Earth. She’s safe right? They haven’t invaded or anything, have they?_

“My name is Lotor, my ranks are Prince, Commander and Acolyte, dependent upon the occasion, but both in public and private you will call me ‘master’. You will assume at any moment, everywhere except within these chambers, that we are being observed. Here we are warded against such unwanted attention. Outside, you will not speak unless I order you to do so. Within these walls, you will immediately cease speaking when I command it,” the alien challenged imperiously.

“Yes, sir! Master! Sorry, I’ve never… um… been a slave or servant or prisoner before. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I swear, I just… never mind. Sorry. I’ll try to speak less. And be as useful to you as possible. Because you saved my life and I have no idea what your customs and culture are, I would have studied anthropology if we ever thought we’d meet alien life that wasn’t microbes but… I can be silent too. Really. So I’ll stop talking now.”

Prince Lotor eyed him suspiciously, as if doubting his claim. Matt couldn’t blame him, considering.

“This room is for your use, but I will, of course, enter whenever I wish. These are the quarters for my… servant. It is unused, as I have never kept a servant before. You mentioned training in organic chemistry and xenobiology. Are you experienced in the crafting of poisons and antidotes?” Prince Lotor asked.

Matt felt his eyes widening and he swallowed. “I, um, have never done that before, no,” he admitted anxiously, and then afraid of disappointing his apparently reluctant savior, he added, “Though I would be able to, with the proper equipment. Master.” He added the last belatedly, trying not to offend.

“Then you may prove of some use after all,” the alien Prince admitted grudgingly.

Matt swallowed again. _Who is he planning on poisoning?_ “I’m also a mechanic,” he volunteered quickly, because he didn’t want to kill anyone. “I can pretty much fix anything that’s broken, with the proper tools and parts, assuming your technology is anything at all similar to ours, and not just so advanced it looks like magic, you know, Clarke’s Third Law, except no, you probably don’t even know who Clarke is and, he said,  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and well, some of what I’ve seen since coming here certainly falls into that category, though I’m not an idiot, I know magic’s not real,” Matt prattled, cursing himself for it when he saw the look of incredulity on the Prince’s face.

“You actually believe magic isn’t real? What a naïve simpleton you are. And you call yourself educated, a man of science?” Prince Lotor scoffed.

Matt gritted his teeth and bit back what he wanted to say. He’d been reading encyclopedias at the age of five, he could have easily skipped grades, only his parents didn’t want him to become even more socially awkward than he already was, he’d graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Academy, even Shiro hadn’t been able to beat his scores. No one had ever called him an idiot before.

Apparently he wasn’t able to school his expression, from the look of haughty disdain he received. “The robes I wear, boy, are a Druid’s robes. I am an Acolyte. A practitioner of magic. If you expect to live for longer than a day here, you will immediately disabuse yourself of the foolish notion that magic is not real,” Prince Lotor ordered. And then he vanished in a twisted swirl of acrid looking but odorless smoke and reappeared halfway across the room, as if realizing he’d need to provide scientific evidence for Matt to believe.

“Holy crap! You just teleported. Like Nightcrawler, from the X-Men, but without the stench of brimstone, though not that you’d know who he is either, because who reads decades old comics anymore, even if they are classics, and his mother was Margala, a sorcerer, there was this one issue where she put Doctor Strange in his place, snatched the All Seeing Eye of Agamotto from him like it was child’s play because she actually used to own it and… sorry. I’m doing it again. Thank you very much for the demonstration, Master. I appreciate your efforts in trying to keep me alive here. I will assist you in whatever manner I can, so that someday you might be able to appreciate my worth to you.” Because he clearly hadn’t impressed this alien who held his life in his hands at all so far.

“Ashwan teaches us that every life has value. Though I believe, in your case, he’d have been challenged to support that tenet of his teachings,” Prince Lotor stated dryly.

If Katie had told him that, she would have been teasing, but from what he’d seen so far, none of the Galra had a sense of humor, sarcastic, sardonic, or otherwise. He was curious as to who Ashwan might be, he sounded like he might be more than a scholar, a philosopher or maybe even religious leader, but he wasn’t about to ask. Never speak about religion or politics when you might offend someone by it. And this alien was an Acolyte, in a druidic order. An uninitiated speaking Ashwan’s name might get his tongue cut out or head lopped off.

A jarring buzz made Matt jump, his heart pounding, as he looked for the source of the raucous sound.

Prince Lotor strode to the wall and depressed a switch. “Prince Lotor,” he stated briskly.

“Why aren’t you here? That fool Myzax is dead, there is a new Champion,” a powerful voice boomed.

Prince Lotor had stiffened to attention at the first word, as if the speaker could see him, though Matt didn’t see a viewscreen. “Forgive me, Father. I had duties elsewhere that precluded my attendance.”

“Come, now,” the voice demanded, sounding cold and deadly.

“Vrepit sa!” the Prince stated, saluting the comm unit in a manner that reminded Matt uncomfortably of the footage he’d seen of the ancient Nazi salute.

Prince Lotor flicked off the comm and turned to Matt. “You will touch nothing outside this room and the fresher it is connected to while I am gone. You will not leave your quarters. Is that understood?” he demanded, sounding incensed.

Matt snapped to attention and instinctively responded with a Garrison salute. “Yes, sir!”

There was a brief flash of surprise on the alien’s face, which Matt guessed was likely an indication of how much his father, his Emperor, had rattled him. Matt sincerely doubted many expressions were ever revealed unintentionally by this man.

The Prince nodded, and then he strode to the doorway to Matt’s quarters, and exited without further word.

Matt exhaled loudly, slumping in relief where he stood. It had been a gamble, but apparently by saluting him he’d finally done something right.


	3. Test of Patience

As soon as Prince Lotor was gone, Matt began examining his new quarters. Spartan as they were, they were lightyears beyond the slave pens. The bedroom was meticulously clean and neat and uncluttered, no stacks of scientific journals, piles of oily machinery parts or other familiar sights to mark it as his, but that was fine. He wasn’t here for the long haul, only until he could escape. Because yes, he owed Prince Lotor his life, but wasn’t it written somewhere in the Geneva Convention that a prisoner’s first duty was to escape? In order to do that, though, he’d need tools, weapons, supplies, a spaceship, a pilot, Shiro, he’d need Shiro, and his dad, because he wasn’t leaving here without them.

But first things first. He hadn’t had any water today, and he’d lost a lot of blood, and miraculous alien healing aside, he was likely pretty dehydrated, even if he didn’t feel it. And the fresher sounded like it might be a bathroom. And regardless of the water, it would be a good idea to scope out the facilities now, before he needed them, because he might not be able to figure out how they worked right away, and thinking was always easier when you weren’t holding your breath with your legs crossed. Because he needed to show Prince Lotor he was at least housebroken.

The sight of the bathroom almost brought tears to his eyes. There was a shower and sink and a metal contraption imbedded in the wall which was likely the toilet, but best of all there were drawers, and surprisingly they weren’t empty, although Prince Lotor had said no one had ever used these quarters, at least, no servants. But there were spicy scented soaps and oils and lotions, combs and brushes, even something that could pass as a toothbrush with a substance similar to toothpaste, though the scent was more like jalapeno peppers than mint. But best of all, there was a grooming set, not just manicure tools, picks and files which could double as lockpicks and screwdrivers and tiny levers, but scissors and what looked to be some sort of electric razor.

Matt experimented with the razor, confirming that was indeed what it was, and then he promptly took it apart using his improvised tool kit, the compulsion unstoppable. He felt his anxiety lessen with every part he removed, the way it always did when he disassembled something. Then he put it back together and tested it. To his delight, it still worked. He began searching the lower cabinet, looking for – Bingo! A hairdryer. He tested it and then took it apart too.

If he’d been Katie, he could have left both in pieces and taken apart a few other things in his room and then assembled a mishmash of the parts and created a robot or bomb, spaceship or time machine. She was absolutely brilliant when it came to tech, far out of his league. He could repair things, but she could create them. But then, she had never done half as well in biology or chemistry as him, not even the basic, easy courses. Physics and math, though, those she trounced him in. Especially calculus. And robotics of course. She loved assembling robots. And the world was suddenly too blurry to see.

Matt took a deep breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. Crying wouldn’t get him anywhere except more dehydrated. He needed to keep exploring his new habitat.

It didn’t take as long as he thought it might to unlock the secrets of operating the toilet. He was tempted to take it apart too, but he didn’t want to risk angering Prince Lotor if something went wrong, because filling his quarters with sewage definitely wasn’t the best move in terms of his life expectancy.

He had reluctantly decided against taking apart the comm panel too, the one in his bedroom, because that might set off an alarm somewhere and if some technician came to investigate he might have a hard time explaining what he was doing in the Prince’s quarters, since he’d never had a servant before. Of course, they might think he was there for another reason, if the Prince was known for sleeping with short, scrawny geeky guys instead of Princesses. _Which actually would be one way to get a closer look at his alien biology_ , he thought devilishly.

Matt winced and fought against the threat of tears again, because he’d pictured Katie shaking her head in mock dismay.

He resolutely tested the sink, desperately needing to do something with his hands, and found out that the hot water was insanely hot, actually full on boiling, right out of the tap. It’s a good thing he hadn’t first tested the hot in the shower, or he’d have been scalded badly, given his habit of standing under the showerhead and putting on only the hot, allowing the water to slowly heat to more tolerable levels without wasting any of it. New spaceship pipes versus decades old Terran plumbing. And apparently, Galran skin was a lot tougher than human skin, or at least, more heat resistant, which he mentally filed away along with the few other observations he’d made about them so far.

He tentatively drank some of the cold water, from the conveniently provided metal cup. It tasted surprisingly good, not flavorless like the recycled water in their spaceship, which had the taste as well as the impurities filtered out. He hoped there weren’t any metals or other contaminants or bacteria that were harmless to Galra but might make him ill. Although if the water in the slave pens hadn’t killed him, this certainly shouldn’t, unless, of course, the quantities were minute and the effects were cumulative, which was more than likely.

He drank some more anyway, because now that he wasn’t terrified of dying in the arena, he was hungry, and he had no idea when he’d get to eat, because he wasn’t going to risk disobeying Prince Lotor’s orders and looking for the kitchen, assuming there was one, which there actually might not be, since this was a ship cabin, not an apartment or hotel, though it was hard to remember, because it was so damned big. It had been the sheer size of the Galran ship that attacked them that had terrified him at first, before he realized those were gun ports he was gaping at.

“Nope, we’re not thinking about that,” he told himself firmly, out loud. He clapped his hands together and jumped at the sound. “Let’s go find some more clothes and something else to take apart instead,” he belatedly added with forced enthusiasm.

0 0 0

It was suspiciously quiet when Lotor returned to his quarters, entering them as cautiously as he would any potentially hostile territory, as always. In spite of the wards, and his impressive level of power, there was at least one Druid more powerful onboard, and likely more than one, which meant his carefully constructed and charged wards would be useless against them.

He scanned the common area of his quarters. Everything looked in place, undisturbed. He ventured into his galley. Nothing appeared disturbed there, either, every ward still in place. The threat of poison was a constant one, thanks to the Witch, and he had a number of special detection wards in the galley in addition to the others, to hopefully alert him of any uninvited presence.

He frowned guiltily as he stared at the neat packages of vegetable matter in his cooling unit, belatedly realizing the lateness of the hour when his stomach made its presence known by growling at him like a feral beast. It was possible his new servant was so quiet because he had fainted from hunger. They would both eat later. Not together, of course. The young man was his servant, hardly of equal rank. No one was of similar rank. No one ever had been. Whenever he didn’t dine with his father, he dined alone, which had become more and more frequent the older he grew and more disgusted his father became with him. Being a vegetarian, of course, hardly served to sooth matters.

Resolutely he headed for his bed chamber to examine it for signs of intrusion. He could not believe such a loquacious and fidgety young man would manage to keep out of trouble for such an extended period of time, and not allow his curiosity to get the better of him. But again, when he carefully checked the wards and hidden traps for signs of intrusion, there were none.

Lotor swallowed hard at the implications. Had the young man left his quarters entirely, as soon as his back was turned, as soon as he was out of the way? Belatedly he realized the door to the corridor was only warded against entrance, not exit. The thought both infuriated him and panicked him, not because his new servant might die, if he fled, because slaves and soldiers died all the time, under his father’s reign, they were all merely walking corpses waiting their turn, but because when he was inevitably discovered and caught, they’d think him an escaped slave, interrogate him, and learn the truth, that Prince Lotor was an even weaker fool than any of them already believed.

He headed for the servants quarters at a near run, tore open the door, and uncharacteristically almost tripped on his own feet as he jerked to a halt at the scene of chaos before him. “What have you done?” he demanded, more exasperated than enraged, though from the way the alien jumped, he must have looked the latter.

“You’re back! I mean, of course you’re back, I knew you’d be back, but I just didn’t expect- Not that I’ve been keeping track of time or anything, because you stole my watch and comm, not you personally, but the soldiers who captured us, and oh this? Don’t worry, I can put it all back together again,” his new servant assured him. “Master. Really.”

Lotor put his hand to his temple, slender but strong fingers rubbing futilely at the tension headache that his father had started and his mother had exacerbated a thousandfold. He tried to keep his voice level, calm. “You took part your room. Literally. The bed. The desk. The bureau. The chair. You took apart the quiznaking walls!” He vaguely realized he was shouting the last words.

“Well, not really the walls. The comm panel and the light switches and the toilet, which is imbedded in the wall, and the faucets, which are attached to it and… But I can put it all back together again! When I told you I was a technician and mechanic I meant it, but most of this was because I was curious, sure, but also bored and kind of… um…” He swallowed visibly and licked his lips as if they were suddenly dry.

 _Scared._ Lotor knew all about fear, both his mother and father reveled in instilling terror in everyone around them, particularly him. He quickly quashed the moment of empathy. That way led to madness. He was alone by choice, he would continue to remain alone, for his own safety and that of those around him. He never should have rescued this alien. But he could not regret that he had done so. As a follower of Ashwan, all life was sacred, from the tiniest bacteria to the largest creature others might call monsters. Possibly even his father’s and mother’s lives, though were Ashwan still alive, even _He_ might have debated the point. His young servant had clearly been frightened about his future, which was a positive sign for intelligence that his actions while he was away otherwise seemed to have lacked.

“When I don’t have things to do… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give you a headache, you look just like my dad when-” the alien abruptly ceased speaking and actually drew quickly back until the far wall stopped him.

Lotor struggled to determine why, over the pain, and realized to his shock and horror that his hand was no longer at his temple, that both his hands were now palm up and out at his sides, his fingers curled into talons, claws upwards, golden energy swirling with black smoke in both like miniature typhoons of fury. He dispelled the energy immediately, dropping his hands to his sides, appalled not only at his loss of control, or at the fact that black smoke horrifyingly like his mother's had swirled within his usual pure golden light, but also at how oblivious he had been to the summoning and near release of his power at all. Had this been his father or mother he had been confronting, he would have just invited his own death. All because this alien boy had compared him to his own father.

Belatedly he realized that it had not been meant as an insult, that the boy clearly actually appeared to love his father in a way he never could love the cruel monster that was his own. “I will not harm you,” he snapped, furious not at his servant, but disgusted with himself, though from the way the young man cringed more tightly against the wall, hunching over arms now crossed protectively across his chest, the alien was oblivious to that fact. No, not alien. Mattholt. He has a name.

“I am not angered with you, Mattholt. The mess was… unexpected, though I likely should have anticipated it, considering the amount of time I was absent, and how new you are to your surroundings. You obeyed my commands. You did not leave your quarters, in spite of your… inquisitive nature. I will make allowances for that in the future. I have learned I must set tasks for you, so that you are not idle, unless I wish to have my quarters taken apart around my ears. Your next task is to reassemble your room. But first, you are likely hungry. You will eat with me, where I can keep an eye and ear upon you, to ensure I still have a floor to walk upon.”

0 0 0

Matt stared, baffled and weak with relief. He’d thought he was about to _die_. But if what his captor said was true, he wasn’t the source of his anger, in spite of what he’d done. He honestly hadn’t meant to take apart _everything_ , but he’d gotten more and more anxious with each passing minute, and Prince Lotor had been gone for _hours_. He’d started to think it might be days, that he’d starve to death, be completely forgotten, but he hadn’t dared risk looking for food.

And he’d apologized for scaring him. He’d even taken the blame for what had clearly looked like destruction to him. He actually even praised him for not leaving the room. And then… he’d even _joked_ about it. Twice. The humor was subtle and sardonic, but there. _Thank God._

“Would you like me to cook for us?” Matt offered dubiously, because he cooked well, since cooking was, after all, simply food chemistry, but he had no idea how to use any of the equipment in their kitchen or what ingredients might look or taste like here, or even knew where the kitchen was. Or galley, probably, since this was a ship, they probably would call it a galley. “Or is there a Mess Hall or Officer’s Mess, I guess, though I certainly wouldn’t… Sorry. I promise I’ll try to keep it to one question at a time, it’s just, when I say something stupid or weird I just keep going, hoping people will forget, I guess, only they never do, because… I’ll stop talking now,” he promised, though he didn’t seem to have exasperated his new master this time. _Likely because he knows now you’re definitely not even housebroken._

“We will eat in my quarters. I always dine here. As my servant, never eat anything that is offered to you by anyone other than me. Though there has not been time enough or sample victims of your species enough to yet determine which poisons work upon you, there are a number that work upon nearly all of those with our basic shared genetic characteristics,” Prince Lotor stated matter-of-factly.

Matt’s eyes widened. “ _That’s_ why you asked me about poisons and antidotes before? I thought you wanted me to poison someone for you, but you’re the one being poisoned? Who? Why? Oh. Assassination. Of course. Are you the Crown Prince? Are their siblings or cousins or uncles rivaling for your father’s throne?”

Prince Lotor stared at him as if he had just asked something completely preposterous. “My father has held his throne for ten millennia. Any potential rivals were eliminated long ago, save for me,” he stated grimly. “Now come. I will prepare our meal, and after we eat, I will show you where the medical kit is, so that you may familiarize yourself with its contents. Then you will reassemble your room.”

 _Ten millennia? Are these aliens actually immortal?_ He barely kept himself from asking, because the Prince had abruptly changed the topic back to dinner and his new duties, and he was starting to learn when not to prod. “Yes, sir,” Matt replied, nodding, eager to prove he wasn’t a burden, that he’d actually be useful to keep around.

“Do not look so eager. I do not plan on being poisoned anytime soon,” Prince Lotor stated dryly.

 Matt felt his face flush with heat. “I wasn’t! I just... you need to know you made a good decision, saving me,” Matt stated honestly.

“That remains to be seen, Mattholt,” the Prince said loftily, his first and last name spoken together again, as if that was his name. Matt again had the impression the Prince was teasing him again, and not necessarily about his name. He’d been speaking quickly before, when he introduced himself, and the Prince might genuinely have misunderstood. But he wasn’t about to mention it, at least, not yet.

“Would you like me to get something for your headache?” Matt asked, eager to help.

“No. I never impair myself with medication. I am an Acolyte. I have no need of it,” the Prince claimed.

Matt doubted that was the case, and wondered why he had a medical kit then, from what he’d seen earlier, but he wasn’t about to say so. Even he had some common sense regarding when to stay silent.   


	4. How to Serve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is not my intention to offend anyone with the religious views outlined below or within the rest of my story. I respect and support all religions that do not promote harm.
> 
> In case anyone is curious, I wrote the prayer Lotor recites, after reading about 20 Native American prayers of different types for inspiration and cadence.

Lotor escorted Mattholt to the galley. He began to prepare their dinner in silence, but he was once again reminded that one could never apparently acquaint the word “silence” with his new servant. The young man was curious and ignorant about everything he saw, from the basic food preparation equipment to every fruit and vegetable. Lotor began patiently teaching him, though he would never allow his servant to prepare a meal for him, of course. He hadn’t lived this long by being foolishly naïve and trusting.

“I’m surprised you don’t eat meat, considering your dentition,” Mattholt commented. “Unless your race evolved needing to pierce the outer shell of something hard, like nuts, or maybe something fibrous, like bamboo, because from what I’ve seen in museums, pandas used to have canines similar to yours.”

Lotor immediately bristled and glared at him in stony silence. Now even his own servant was criticizing him for being a vegetarian. “My dietary choices are not your concern. You will not eat meat either, for as long as you are under my protection.”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that was a touchy subject. I know lots of vegetarians and I don’t care where my protein comes from. I’m not trying to annoy you, honest. I warned you my social skills aren’t the best. But I’m an excellent cook, once I familiarize myself with your ingredients and tastes, I’ll be able to cook for you, and I can repair things, if I have access to tools, because I’ve pretty much worn the tips of the manicure set down to nothing, and I can develop antitoxins for you, if I have a lab to work in,” Mattholt assured him eagerly.

The thought of this wide-eyed naïve young innocent in a Druid laboratory for any reason, either as specimen or technician, made Lotor bristle.

“I’m sorry! For damaging the tools and asking for so much. I’ll do whatever you order me to, manual labor, menial tasks, anything. You saved my life. I’m incredibly grateful, really I am. I’m sorry if I’m not sounding or acting like it,” Mattholt apologized, sounding truly sincere and contrite.

Lotor sighed. “I have told you, I am not angered with you. For all your words of lacking social skills, you clearly are not oblivious to facial and vocal contextual cues, even though you continue to misread mine. Laboratories here are… not somewhere you would wish to ever find yourself near, let alone inside. And before I was exasperated, not angered. You can be assured that if you ever have the misfortune of seeing me truly enraged, you will never mistake it for something else,” he admitted ruefully.

Mattholt grinned. “If you’re anything like Katie-“ He fell silent, instantly, and his face fell as well, to a frown of sorrow and worry and loss so intense merely looking at it all but burned.

His servant swallowed repeatedly, and then turned away, his hand scrubbing vigorously at his face. Apparently his species also cried when upset, or possibly leaked mucus or some equally unpleasant substance rather than saline.

“I’m sorry. Ka… she’s my sister. She wasn’t with us, thank God, she’s still back on Ea… home. With Mom. It was just me and Dad and Shiro.”

“Shiro is your brother?” Lotor hazarded, not wanting to cause his servant more pain, but needing to know. Captive family would mean divided loyalty, if that family was at all valued, and his appeared to be.

“Not by blood, no. But he was like a brother. He was my roommate at the Garrison, the Academy. I was studying to be a xenobiologist and biochemist, and he was studying to be a pilot. All both of us wanted was to get assigned to the Kerberos mission, to explore one of the moons at the edge of our solar system. That mission had been our dream, ever since we heard about it, before we even knew each other. And we got it, everything we wanted. Dad was even leading the expedition, I was going to get to work with him, just the three of us. It was a dream come true. Until… it wasn’t,” Matt finished awkwardly.

“Until we captured and enslaved you,” Lotor stated bluntly. “Do you know if your father and Shiro survived being taken?”

Mattholt nodded wordlessly, swallowing a few times, then he took a deep breath and spoke. “We all got captured together. They… your people… didn’t hurt me or Dad, but Shiro was trying to protect us and... He was knocked unconscious. Twice. I thought he was dead, but when they took my dad away, they dragged Shiro along with me, to the slave pens. They actually put us in the same cage – cell, I guess – together. I know both basic and advanced first aid, I’m a certified first responder, we all had to be, in order to go on the mission, but without any supplies I couldn’t really do much for a concussion. But even when they took our clothes and pretty much left us to all but starve, at least they didn’t take Shiro.

“I don’t know how long ago it was that we came here – days at least – or a week, maybe two? It sort of all blurred together after a while, without any way to tell time. I’m pretty sure we only got a single meal a day, and I think your day is longer than ours, at least it felt like it was, but the stronger prisoners took our food from us, because Shiro’s big, and he knows how to fight, but he’s a teddy bear at heart and he had a concussion and I was always the last guy picked for the team when phys ed was mandatory, you know?

“By the time he was able to stand up to them, it was almost too late, we were both almost too weak, but desperation can bring strength, and Shiro’s cunning, he’s brilliant, and he learned when and where to get them, to get our food back. He could have taken theirs, too, but he didn’t, not after those first few days when we needed more, because he saw they wouldn’t last if he did, and-“ Mattholt ceased speaking abruptly, his distant eyes suddenly snapping to his face.

“Crap. I’m sorry. I know that sounds like I was criticizing your people…”

He trailed off, likely because that was true, he had been. “Most other Galra would have cuffed you or clawed you or simply killed you long before now for your words, even though you were responding to a question I had voiced,” Lotor warned.

Mattholt’s eyes widened.

“Brevity is always safest. ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘I live to serve’ are nine tenths of what you need to say in response to any question. Though beware: groveling is a sign of weakness and will earn you an early death. Very few aliens realize that quickly enough,” Lotor cautioned.

“But as you are malnourished, and I am actually hungry enough to tempt fate by eating, it is time to prepare our repast,” Lotor stated, changing the topic to something potentially more pleasant.

He began instructing his new servant in the different names of the plants he removed from their vacuum sealed packages, as he prepared the salad that was to be their dinner. He doubled the usual portion. He would have tripled it, but he did not want his servant to become ill from eating too much too quickly, though he was careful to add extra legumes, to ensure there was more protein than he usually required. Then he frowned. “I just realized that not only might you be allergic to some of this, but it might well be poisonous to you. What did they feed you in the slave pens?”

Mattholt crinkled his nose, and Lotor drew back, concerned he was about to sneeze and spread unknown germs about his cabin. “This rancid yellow gruel. I have no idea what was in it. I don’t think I want to know what was in it.”

Ah. Apparently that odd expression was merely a gesture of distaste, then.

“I could analyze it and let you know what’s toxic and what isn’t,” Mattholt stated, looking hopeful. “If I had the equipment, I could set up a mini lab in my room, so it would be out of your way. I’d need it anyway, to be able to make antitoxins for you,” he urged.

 _Remarkable._ His newly rescued slave expected to be allowed to use chemicals, to study toxins, within Lotor’s own quarters. He was certainly not lacking in sheer audacity.

“Stay still. I will instead analyze you to determine what might or might not be of danger to you,” Lotor commanded, though after the power he had expended healing his servant, teleporting, and then maintaining his mental shields not only before his father, but afterwards, before his mother as well, without having yet eaten, he was unaccustomedly straining himself and already had a brutal headache to show for it.

His servant stared wide-eyed at his glowing hands, and Lotor belatedly remembered that Mattholt had not believed in magic and had not been conscious when he healed him. He forced himself to concentrate upon his biology and physiology and then drew back in relief. “None of what I normally consume should pose a danger to you.”

“You can really tell that just by…? That’s so cool! Can you teach me how to do that or is that something only your species can do? Or is it just you? Is that why you look different than the other-?“ Mattholt broke off abruptly and drew back, but seemed to remember at the last moment not to cower, apparently realizing cowering was the equivalent to groveling.

“My parentage is also not your concern,” Lotor snapped, fully aware that his eyes were glowing with yellow fire. He never would have revealed so much to his servant had he not been so drained, were the pain in his head not weakening his restraint, but that was no excuse. Again he knew that, had it been his father or mother, he would have suffered for it.

A wave of humiliation and fear shook him. “Leave my presence. Go to your quarters and repair what you destroyed. I will inspect it afterwards and only if it meets with my approval will you eat,” he commanded harshly, lashing out at his servant.

“Yes, sir,” Mattholt replied, and fled quickly.

Lotor cursed silently. He did not want a servant who was terrified of him. Terrified servants escaped and betrayed. But he needed to eat, and blessed Ashwan, he needed to be able to _think_. He could do neither in the presence of the alien. It would be hard enough with his head pounding. The additional use of his power to examine his servant had only exacerbated his headache. He would need to try to meditate it away later. He could not risk imbibing any kind of medication, not with an alien in his quarters and his father still specifically annoyed with him, though fortunately his mother was too excited about the new Champion to be in a particularly dangerous mood, though she had spoken only in the most general terms about her newest specimen-to-be.

He finished preparing the meal, separating out Mattholt’s portion and returning it to the cooling unit, confident it would be consumed tonight, though likely at an exceedingly late krone. Then he softly uttered a heartfelt prayer of thanks over his meal and slowly began to eat.

0 0 0

“Idiot! You’re so stupid! You should have realized that there was a different reason he didn’t look like the others, that he might be sensitive about it, like Julio, but did you stop and think? No, of course not. You just ran your mouth, like always. You’ve lucky he didn’t cut out your tongue or chop off your head or something. You’re a slave, now. You’re not a scientist or an explorer, a soldier or a student. You’re a captive. Your life is literally in his hands. Now get to work,” Matt ordered himself.

He eyed his worn improvised toolset dubiously and then began looking through the individual stacks of parts. “Congratulations, you’re now a screwdriver. Because if the hairdryer doesn’t work, I can do without, but I need the water, toilet and light switches.” But what he wouldn’t give for a real set of screwdrivers and a pair of pliers, or better yet, vice grips and a set of wrenches.

“If wishes were fishes you’d eat for a week. Except not here, because you’re a vegetarian now. Which is fine, really. At least you _like_ vegetables. If you were Tessa, you’d starve.”

Matt continued talking to himself but tried to force his thoughts away from his fellow Academy graduates, as he reassembled the bed first, because it was the biggest but conversely had the fewest actual pieces. Then he rebuilt the light switches, so he’d be able to turn the lights off again, and the toilet, because bodily functions were unfortunately important. Once he reassembled the faucet for the sink, he took a water drink break, to fill his otherwise empty stomach. Then he rebuilt the shower. He’d leave the razor for last. He went back into the sleeping quarters and reassembled his desk, and the chair. Fortunately he’d always enjoyed putting things together as much as taking them apart. Not like Katie who…

“Damn it. No more thinking about her, about home, OK? Not tonight. Man up, wimp,” he scolded himself as he wiped away the tears. “At this rate you won’t even last a full month here. You were lucky enough to get rescued from the gladiator pit. You can’t screw this up. Dad and Shiro need you.” Appropriately chastised, he returned to work.

He reassembled the bureau, and then the comm panel, and finally the razor. Then he used the mostly destroyed manicure kit to put the hairdryer back to some semblance of order, but he’d completely trashed his new screwdriver, which was apparently an important part, since it refused to work. Everything else though worked fine, at least, he thought it would. He didn’t dare test the comm panel of course.

He had half expected his new master to check up on him. He wasn’t sure whether he should risk going back out into the living area of the quarters or not, but decided he’d better take the chance if he wanted to eat any time soon.

The living area was empty. So was the dining area and galley. He looked hesitantly at the other four doors. At least one of them led outside. He wasn’t sure where the other three led. To the Prince’s sleeping quarters presumably? And maybe to a fresher for guests? And to an office or study or library? _Should I knock? Or is it safer to call out? I have no idea what is considered rude._

“Um, hello? Master? I’ve finished,” he called out, hopefully loudly enough to be heard, without being annoying.

0 0 0

Lotor was wrenched from his meditations by the first step of his servant into the living area. He frowned. There was no chronometer in the meditation chamber, but his internal chronometer did not indicate enough time had passed for his servant to be finished with such a monumental task. He rose reluctantly, even as his servant’s voice called out cautiously.

 “Um, hello? Master? I’ve finished.”

Lotor straightened his clothing, regretting now having changed into his karfen, but the lose top and pants made meditation easier than his uniform, it was late, and he’d had a full day. At least his headache had settled from being a spike through his brain to an annoying ache. He checked the monitor to ensure his servant wasn’t lying in wait to ambush him, then extended his power to be certain, because the alien had proven himself to be competent at least in taking apart machinery, if not taking it over.

He cursed silently as a knife of pain sliced through his skull and into his brain at the further overextension of his already overused power. But at least he verified what he saw on the monitor was indeed what awaited him.

He strode to the door and opened it, and then stepped into the living area still barefoot, because sandals would be harder to fight in, if it became necessary, and his toe claws were even stronger than his finger claws. “You are finished?” he asked levelly, not allowing his skepticism to show, because he had already betrayed far too much emotion to his new servant.

 “Yes sir. Everything is reassembled, and it almost all works. I didn’t feel I should test the comm panel. And I needed to use a piece of the hairdryer as a screwdriver to replace the manicure set I’d been using, so it no longer works, though all it needs is a new part,” Mattholt admitted. “I’m sorry for damaging the manicure set and dryer.”

So, his new servant was apparently responsible and honest, at least, or perhaps merely wanted him to believe he was.

Lotor nodded and waved his servant ahead of him to his quarters, since he certainly would not allow the alien to walk behind him. He was relieved to see the room indeed appeared intact once more. He tested both the sink and shower, to ensure they truly worked, as well as the fresher, and the razor. The hair dryer indeed did not work.

“You have done well. You will not be punished for the tools you damaged. You may dine now. Come with me,” Lotor instructed. He escorted his servant to the galley and got out the salad he had prepared.

Mattholt’s eyes widened. “All that’s for me?” he asked, gaping, clearly floored by the sight of the modest salad, for some reason.

Lotor raised a single brow.

“That’s twice the size of my head,” Mattholt stated.

“Yes. I was concerned a proper portion would be too much for you,” Lotor agreed as he set the bowl and fork onto the table and gestured for his servant to sit. He, of course, remained standing.

Mattholt looked from him to his dinner.

“You may eat,” he ordered, somewhat dryly.

“Um. Would you be offended if I said a prayer of thanks over my meal? Even silently? I don’t want to do anything that might anger you out of my ignorance,” he stated.

Lotor was surprised by the request. No one else he had ever met actually prayed over their food in thanks, as he did. He wondered if it would be the same prayer he spoke, or a different one. “You may,” he allowed, intrigued. “Aloud,” he added, to ensure he might hear it.

0 0 0

“Thank you,” Matt said sincerely. He wasn’t devout, not at all, he actually didn’t even believe in God, but his mother had always insisted, and for some reason, the thought of not saying Grace, after everything that had happened was unbearable. Because he really honestly wanted to offer thanks to the universe for still being alive and able to eat this meal, after everything that had happened.

He interlocked his fingers and bowed his head, though he didn’t risk closing his eyes, not here. Then he uttered the familiar prayer, but with a heartfelt depth of feeling he’d never felt before. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is thy kingdom and thy power and thy glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

He risked glancing at his master when he was done and caught a flicker of a frown on his face, which was instantly concealed.

“I’m sorry. Did I offend you somehow?” Matt asked cautiously. _I should never have asked to pray. Your stupid faith is going to get me killed, Mom._

“No. But… your prayer was… strange to me,” Prince Lotor stated hesitantly, as if cautious about offending him or his God.

Matt exhaled in relief. Lotor seemed to be intrigued, not angered or disgusted. “In what way? I won’t take offense, and neither would my God. My mother says he’s a kind and forgiving God, that he accepts everyone, regardless of their personal beliefs, that he even loves me.”

Something flashed across the alien’s face, confusion or astonishment, maybe, though it was too fast to tell.

“The prayer I learned is quite different. If it would not offend you to hear it, I could recite it for you,” he offered, somehow sounding both hopeful and reluctant, almost as if the words were dragged from him against his will.

“I’d be honored to hear it,” Matt stated truthfully, because clearly he was not as ambivalent about his likely non-existent God as Matt was.

“I will just be a moment,” he stated, and to Matt’s surprise, returned to the alien refrigerator. He returned a moment later with something round and almost iridescent white in his hand: it looked almost like a fist sized moonstone on a black plate made of the same material as Matt’s bowl.

Then he sat opposite Matt. He looked at the fruit and spoke, in a voice soft, sincere, respectful and humble.

“Thank you for your sacrifice,  
  so that your quintessence might join that within me.  
To my eyes give clear vision,  
  so I might see though the illusions that bind me.  
To my ears give sharp hearing,  
  so I might know deception in all its myriad guises.  
To my hands and feet give both strength and gentleness,  
  so that I might protect the life around me.  
To my mind give the wisdom and awareness to differentiate truth from falsehood,  
  so that I might realize the breadth of knowledge I yet lack.  
To my spirit give patience and perseverance, humility and nobility of purpose,  
  so I might bend in the wind but never break.  
And to my heart give both compassion and conviction,  
  so that I might accept that the continuation of my life might justify the loss of yours.”

Then his eyes lifted to meet Matt’s.

“That’s… wow. That’s a lot better than my Mom’s prayer. I mean, it makes a lot more sense. Some parts of it are actually similar, the thanking for the food part, and the clear vision and knowledge of deception, that’s like the temptation part, and a little bit the evil part, like the telling truth from lies, and compassion. It sounds sort of Native American, not that you’d know what that means, and I really don’t want to get into what happened to them, considering, because… Sorry. I just really liked it.”

0 0 0

Lotor stared at his new servant, overcome by his straightforwardly voiced acceptance and even appreciation of his faith. As a traditionalist, his beliefs were considered antiquated and foolhardy, disdained both within the Druidic order and the military, which was conversely the only thing that had kept him alive so far when his older siblings and distant cousins had all died “nobly, in the performance of their duty.” Pacifists who would rather die for their convictions than fight for them are a threat to no one.

Lotor kept his true capacity for inflicting harm carefully hidden from everyone.

Apparently the Druids his mother led had forgotten many aspects of Ashwan’s teachings: humility, compassion, nobility, but also, the strength required to truly protect life. In order to preserve life, it was sometimes necessary to take it. And Lotor was fully capable of and prepared to do so.


	5. Fathers and Sons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Here is a brief recap of important information from Mysteries and Misimpressions, which takes place during Season 1 of the anime, for those of you who haven’t read it or have forgotten: 
> 
> Chapter 10:  
> Altaeans live a thousand years. Ten millennia ago, the original Blue Paladin, Varic, the husband of the Red Paladin, Nethla, was killed protecting Nethla from an attack by Zarkon, when Zarkon first turned traitor.
> 
> Chapter 12:  
> Zarkon had been in love with Queen Asura and blamed King Alfor for her death, which is why he staged his coup d'etat. King Alfor, ever cautious, seeing that his kingdom might well fall, secretly commanded Varic’s House to publically blame their King, not Zarkon, for Varic’s death, and to seemingly side with Zarkon against him. Half of them entered Zarkon’s service openly, but the other half used their morphing ability to secretly disguise themselves as Galran soldiers, stealthily infiltrating Zarkon’s ranks. 
> 
> Chapter 13:  
> Keith, whose Altaean name is Drace, is half Galran and half Altaean. His father is Thace, one of the last descendents of the Altaean rebels posing as Galran. Thace married warrior Princess Raena of the Imperial Family, a distant relative of Zarkon’s, who was killed in battle while pregnant with Keith. The premature child was rescued from his mother as she died. Drace appeared fully Galran, save for his diminutive size. As his father, by Galran custom, Thace should have killed the child as a weakling unable to serve the Empire. Instead, he secretly took him to Earth to hide him, knowing the Blue Lion was there, hoping his son might live to one day pilot her, though in ten thousand years the Blue Lion had never allowed anyone to enter her, after Varic was killed. Thace used his morphing ability to disguise himself as a human woman, posing as his son’s mother, and the tiny infant morphed into human form, adapting to mimic the new species surrounding him.

Thace hated attending the gladiatorial combats at the arena, watching slaves forced to fight to the death for the Emperor’s and other soldiers’ amusement, but he was careful to put in an appearance frequently enough that no one suspected his reluctance. Tonight, however, he had actually been assigned to guard the Imperial Box, a particular honor, but unfortunately hardly an opportunity to assassinate Emperor Zarkon, not with the myriad other guards stationed around him, and thousands of others witnesses. In 10,000 years, none of the Blades had ever been as trusted, gotten as close as he had to their enemy’s Emperor, but he had not done so by being rash and impulsive. He needed to bide his time and attack at the proper time. There would be no second chance. And succeed or fail, he was well aware he would be just as dead.

He was unsurprised to see that the seat which should have been occupied by Prince Lotor was conspicuously empty, though it was quite possible the Prince was lurking about in his Druid robes, concealed from their presence. He quickly forced all thoughts of Druids from his mind, lest he attract one to him.

“The new prisoners are to fight tonight. Let us hope they don’t prove as disappointing as the last batch,” Emperor Zarkon scoffed.

“If I were allowed even a few days to train them, Excellency, I am certain they would be more entertaining,” the oily fool Vornax boasted.

“If they live, you may train them,” Zarkon replied, the offer a hollow one. There would, of course, be no one left alive to train.

Myzax, the current Champion, was not only bloodthirsty and deadly, but had been altered by the Druids, as soon as his potential was made apparent. It would take a truly exceptional warrior to overcome him, someone ruthless and cunning enough, or perhaps merely someone desperate and lucky enough to survive against him.

Less than half a krone later Thace’s eyes widened in horror as he started at the new Champion, an unknown gladiator new to the arena. The panting man looked human, like a Terran from Earth, though to Thace’s knowledge they had only skirted the rim of that solar system and not attacked the thickly populated planet third from the sun. But this man had somehow survived against Myzax.

 _Because you have the strength of both your mother’s Galran and my Altaean blood, in spite of your appearance?_ _Are you my son?_

The thought was horrifying. He needed to get closer, to learn all he could, without arousing suspicion. Now that this slave had the Emperor’s and likely the Druids’ attention, it would be too risky to speak with him directly, but there must be other prisoners from Earth as well. He would research the records of recent abductions and find someone to question.

0 0 0

Thace stared in dismay at the screen. There had been three aliens from a new species abducted off a moon on the rim of the Sol system. One was the new Champion and a second, small and frail and young, had already been seized by the Druids, after being seriously, possibly mortally wounded by the new Champion, in a vicious attack before entering the arena.

Thace’s stomach churned. _Is the wounded one my son? Still small and weak and frail? There are billions of Terran’s, the likelihood that there is any connection to my son should be preposterous, but fate is too cruel, the universe too amused by irony and suffering for there not to be a link._

_I cannot hope to reach him. I will not even try, until I know for certain. But there is a third slave that was taken, one too old and slow to provide any entertainment as a gladiator. I need to locate him, and question him, before the Druids lay claim to him._

Breath held, he tracked the location of the remaining alien.

_Tangier. They sent him to the mines there. Dependent upon the transport, he might not yet have arrived, so perhaps he is alive. Few slaves live long in the mines. Normally I would not risk going in person and endangering Kavreti. It is a miracle he yet lives. If it was for any other reason than word of my son, I would dare not. I will need to find some sort of plausible duty assignment to justify the trip, without arousing suspicion. I cannot risk trying to communicate with him remotely._

He viewed the duty logs from ships and bases in the general vicinity, looking for an excuse and grinned ferally when he found it. “Rebel pirates. Perfect.”

0 0 0

Sam Holt fought down his growing panic, as the cargo ship carried him deeper and deeper into space, with the single-minded determination of someone accustomed to focusing all his attention on seemingly insurmountable tasks. It was the way he’d made it through college, dating and proposing to Colleen, his internship, every position since, and how he had battled his way to the top of a very long list of qualified candidates for command of the Kerberos mission. He couldn’t regret the latter, because Matt and Shiro would both still have been chosen, and he’d rather be in this hell with them than on Earth oblivious to their plight, possibly never learning why their spaceship had disappeared and all communications ceased.

Except he wasn’t with his two boys. They’d been separated. Matt and an unconscious, injured Shiro had both been dragged away. He only hoped they were still together, that Matt was tending to Shiro, and that Shiro would likewise protect Matt, when he was able. Sam would have vehemently protested their treatment, but he couldn’t afford to be clubbed unconscious too, or to anger his captors against him with an impassioned plea that would only fall upon deaf ears. His goal now was to bide his time, to survive and hopefully somehow make his way back to them, or to prove useful enough to his masters that they’d allow him to select other slaves to assist him in whatever it was they wanted him for, so they could be brought to him.

He only hoped that Matt and Shiro had been separated out to become household or ship or office slaves, something that wasn’t too dangerous or physically taxing, where they could use their skills and intellect, especially in Matt’s case. Something not physically abusive in any way. Particularly sexually. He had always scoffed at the holo vids that portrayed aliens preying sexually upon humans, but from what he had seen since his arrival, race, gender and willingness did not seem to matter. As in the more horrible places on Earth, sex here was used as a weapon of domination. The thought of anyone ever abusing either Matt or Shiro like that… he had barely been able to keep from getting himself killed when they’d struck Shiro in front of him.    

He forced his attention back to his fellow slaves who had been incarcerated along with him in the cargo transport that was being used as a personnel carrier. The sight wasn’t encouraging. They were for the most part old, sick, scarred, weak looking, or maimed, though there were a few muscular ones thrown into the mix, from their sullen and aggressive expressions likely rebellious slaves sent with them for disciplinary reasons, which didn’t bode well for their final destination. They might well have been a danger to their fellow prisoners, were they not also wearing ankle and wrist or similar appendage restraints. The sheer diversity of xenobiology around him would have been a delight, in other circumstances.

One stood out amongst the others, like a sun amidst flickering candle flames. He alone was wearing neither wrist nor ankle restraints, but sadly, it was clearly because he had no need of them. He was crippled enough without them. The breathtakingly beautiful, ephemeral creature was the classic image of a mythical Faerie of Earth, were it not for his size, and the fact that the wings sprouting from his back appeared more like those of a dragonfly than a butterfly. He likely would have been at least seven feet tall, were he standing upright, instead of hunched over in a crumpled heap.

His features were exquisite, too perfect to be creased in pain and despair, his mesmerizing eyes like black opals, liquid night sparkling with the light of thousands of tiny stars. His cheekbones were pronounced, and ears upswept, elven. The Faerie creature’s pearlescent skin looked like it might be soft as silk, in harsh contract to the coarse and shapeless grey prisoners’ tunic and black leggings they all wore. His straight indigo hair was dull and limp, a tangled curtain extending down his back all the way to his feet. His long, slender wings were magnificent, the wingspan a full ten feet, but the translucent, iridescent blue, purple and green gossamer membranes were as limp and lifeless as his slender, elegant limbs, down to his graceful long-fingered hands and narrow bare feet.

The alien had clearly evolved upon a lower gravity planet, and was fighting merely to breathe, the smallest movement a herculean effort of will. He should have been easy prey for the other slaves, but surprisingly, he seemed to inspire a protective urge in everyone around him. No one stole his food or water or harassed him in any way. In fact, the others seemed to view him with the reverence and awe reserved for deities, or perhaps angels.

He would have happily spoken with his fellow prisoners, but they had been ordered to be silent at the start of the trip, and in any case, the Galran translator technology, which had previously been everywhere, apparently didn’t extend to cargo holds on ships never meant to be used as personnel carriers. The chattering, clicking, whistling, gurgling sounds occasionally muttered all around him made no sense. The guards were apparently carrying portable translators which they used when they needed to bark orders at them.

 _I’ll need to steal one of those whenever I get the chance, to help find the boys and escape._ Sam added that task to what was becoming an extensive mental list of steps and supplies he would need.

0 0 0

Fortunately, the guards deigned to feed them and provided water as well, though the rations were meager. They’d been provided with bathroom breaks too, though clearly more for reasons of ship sanitation than concern for their prisoners. Though the guards weren’t particularly brutal, either. They were, for the most part, indifferent, treating them as if they were inanimate cargo.

With each day that passed, Sam’s hopes and spirits fell. The universe was a vast place, and finding Matt and Shiro again, now that they were so far apart, appeared to be a hopeless task, more like finding two grains of sand on all the beaches of Hawaii than the by far simpler task of finding a needle in a haystack.

In spite of the communications gap, he still attempted to befriend his fellow prisoners, with very limited success. Most of them were blank-eyed and apathetic, long since broken by their captivity.

After what he estimated was four days, in an attempt to keep from panicking or losing his mind, he had assembled an impromptu chess set made from random broken bits of plastic and metal scavenged from the floor. The most challenging part wasn’t the moves themselves, but keeping the invisible lines of the board in mind as he played, and remembering what bit of trash was what piece, and what color, when no two bits of refuse looked remotely alike.

It was his second day of play, his fourth game, that he was unexpectedly interrupted.

“What are you doing?” a deep voice rumbled.

Sam jumped at the question, startling so badly that he nearly ruined the game. He’d been concentrating so intently, he hadn’t seen the guard approach. His defense was on his lips when he realized the question hadn’t sounded at all accusatory, merely curious.

“I’m playing chess against myself, to pass the time and keep my mind active,” Sam explained truthfully, not adding that he was keeping his fear at bay, as well, because the Galrans apparently despised healthy, natural fear as weakness.

“It looks like doogresh, but you only have 32 pieces, instead of 48, and none of the pieces are the same, though were it the actual game I suppose they might be. Doogresh is played upon a board of 144 squares, 12 rows of 12 in alternating colors, where opposing armies battle for victory from opposite ends of the board,” he offered helpfully.

“Chess is played upon a similar board, with 64 squares, and two opposing armies of 16 pieces each, usually black against white, with each side containing 2 rooks or castles, 2 knights or men mounted upon warrior beasts, 2 bishops or religious heads, a king and a queen, two rulers, and 8 pawns or foot soldiers,” Sam explained, trying to use more universal terms he hoped the guard might understand, and to not sound too eager, merely helpful.

“So you are one who understands strategy, a vanquished warrior, too old for the arena. You play cautiously, taking time between moves, though perhaps that is merely to make the game last?” the guard asked.

“No. I seek to challenge myself, but as I am aware of the countermoves I would make to every move, it tends to slow the gameplay considerably,” Sam replied.

“Are you considered a master at this strategic exercise?” the guard asked, with what sounded like excitement or perhaps hope in his voice.

“I am, actually. I’m a certified Grand Master, the highest level of skill on my world,” Sam admitted. Though if this conversation was going where he expected it to, he would allow the guard to win, without making it obvious he was doing so.

“No one on this ship can engage in doogresh effectively,” the guard complained. “If you feel you are up to the challenge, I will teach it to you.”

“I would be honored to be instructed by you,” Sam replied humbly, even as he wondered how dangerous it would be. Would his fellow prisoners despise him for seeming to befriend a guard? He should have thought of that earlier. It was too late to back out now. Though he’d had little choice, he had needed to respond to the questions.

“I am Derkon, Lieutenant,” he added.

“I am Sam Holt, xenogeologist,” Sam replied.

That seemed to spark surprise or intrigue in the alien’s eyes.

“My shift is done. I will return with the board and pieces. But I will be watchful of you and your fellow prisoners, Sam Holt. Do not attempt to ambush me or attack me in any manner. I would much rather challenge you to the practice battle of a doogresh match than shoot you,” he warned.

“I would prefer not to die today,” Sam replied truthfully. With his manacles and shackles on restricting his movement, like that of every other slave here, he would not have been able to attack effectively even if he were proficient in fighting, and he most certainly was not.

As Sam had suspected, as soon as Lieutenant Derkon was gone, he received some accusing glares from his fellow prisoners, but fortunately no one seemed incensed enough to risk getting shot by the remaining two armed guards within the cargo bay by fighting.

The Lieutenant returned, a slender black box tucked under one arm. He ushered him over to a relatively empty section in the rear of the cargo hold, next to enormous doors, which Sam assumed led outside, into space. The other times anyone had attempted to wander that far, the guards had forced them back, but apparently as he was with a guard, even one who was off duty, it was allowed. There were two small crates on either side of a larger one, with space between, and gestured him to sit on one of the smaller crates, setting the game box on the larger one, which was the perfect height for a table.

The guard opened the box, revealing a number of compartments containing intricately crafted pieces. He began laying the pieces onto the board, instructing him on the names and positions of each, and explaining the moves they were allowed to take. The range of motion was far more complex than that of chess, and the additional squares upon the board and number of pieces would have been a challenge even were he familiar with the game.

Unsurprisingly, he lost the first game, in spite of hours of painstaking effort. “Forgive me for not providing more of a challenge.”

“You are yet a novice. It is to be expected. But if you are interested, we can play again tomorrow, after my shift is done,” the Lieutenant offered.

“I would like that. Thank you,” Sam replied eagerly.

Sam was careful to stay awake that night until most of his fellow prisoners appeared asleep, but there was no indication anyone was going to retaliate against him for his interactions with the guard. He finally risked sleep.

The next day passed with agonizing slowness, until Derkon’s shift ended. He greeted Sam politely, and they adjourned to their impromptu gaming table. Sam impressed Derkon by remembering the placement of the pieces, and the names of each: after years of memorizing complex geological terminology, it did not place too strong a strain upon his faculties. By the end of the game, Derkon had praised him on two particularly intricate moves, one of which had nearly succeeded in killing his Captain, a relatively minor yet important piece.

On the third day of their gameplay, Derkon surprised him by presenting him with a small, shiny metallic looking packet. He held one too, and demonstrated how to open it. Inside was what appeared to be strips of dried meat and a small cup of what appeared to be blood. He demonstrated dipping the meat in the red substance, and eating with appreciation.

Hoping it was not truly blood, but not wanting to insult the gift, Sam dipped the very tip of a strip of the meat into the suspicious looking sauce, and tasted it. Fortunately, Sam had always had a high tolerance for spicy foods, and he had not yet drunk his water ration for the day, having saved it for the game. He wished for another gallon of water, or better yet, and entire loaf of bread, or a gallon of milk, something to quench the raging inferno of his tongue, as his eyes streamed tears.

The Lieutenant was alarmed, until he assured him he hadn’t been poisoned by it and wasn’t dying, that apparently Galrans had a much higher tolerance for spicy foods than humans, or perhaps an entirely different system of taste.

Derkon excused himself, with instructions that Sam stay put, leaving the board and pieces on the table. He returned a short while later with two familiar looking pouches, extra water rations, which he offered to Sam. Sam took the gift gratefully.

That evening, while they played, Derkon prompted him to speak more about his work, nodding thoughtfully at his replies. In turn, he asked Derkon about the Empire. Sam was eager to learn all he could. The more he understood the way the Galra thought, the more effective his plans for escape would be.

During that game he made six moves that Derkon commented upon. He was getting the hang of the game now, but definitely at the cost of his fellow prisoners’ trust. Not that any of them had seemed to trust him before, but hostile glares were pointedly sent his way more often. It started to become clear that the only thing protecting him was that he was apparently a favored pet of one of the more tolerable guards, but that status likely wouldn’t keep him safe indefinitely.

His distraction showed on the fourth day of their game session in embarrassingly botched moves and the corresponding frown of concern on Derkon’s face as he caught the nervous looks Sam cast towards certain prisoners who were watching them with disturbing intensity. “I should have known better, but I was not thinking in terms of what the other _slaves_ might think. Slaves are, after all, not meant to think, but only to obey,” Derkon said with a trace of what sounded like sarcasm, or perhaps bitterness in his voice.

To Sam’s ear, it sounded like he also had accented the word “slaves,” that perhaps he had been more worried about what his fellow guards might think of their games.

“It was not my intent to be selfish. You have a surprisingly keen mind and inquisitive nature, for an inferior species.” Again, Sam detected a hint of sarcasm, or thought he did. Perhaps it was wishful thinking that this guard saw him as something other than a commodity, merely a tool to be bought and sold and eventually discarded.

Derkon rubbed his upper lip in a gesture he’d used before while lost in thought, but this time he whispered, “You deserve better than the mines. So does everyone sentenced there: slaves, convicts, guards and Overseer Kavreti.” As he spoke, he moved his Captain halfway across the board with his other hand, savagely killing Sam’s remaining General.

Sam blinked, trying to maintain a poker face. The Lieutenant’s move was bold and ruthless, appearing foolish on the surface. For a small temporary victory, he would lose no less than five of his most important pieces, including his Empress. But his Emperor and his few scattered remaining soldiers of lesser rank would survive to claim victory. In thirteen moves at best, six at worst, he would be defeated. There was no hope for victory.

 _A message. He just sent me a message. Did he intentionally cover his mouth so his lips couldn’t be seen?_ A security camera was pointed right at their table, after all. With a start, Sam realized that perhaps that had been intentional, on his part, a “nothing to see here” to whomever might be monitoring those cameras. 

“I enjoy pitting my wit against yours,” Derkon stated. “And perhaps I can take advantage of your intellect for my amusement. You know much about xenogeology, from what you have told me, and even something of mineral assessment and mining. Tell me, what would you do if _you_ were an insubordinate and incompetent fool of a General who was denied a glorious and honorable death in battle, who knew nothing of metals or mines, yet was put in charge of a gold mine where all but one pathetic scraggly vein had been tapped out, where it was not possible to ever meet your monthly quota, even were you to receive the machinery and slaves actually needed to mine the sole remaining vein of ore effectively, yet you were challenged not to fail, in order to prove your loyalty and worth to your Emperor?” Derkon asked, his voice scoffing, mocking and derisive, with no trace of sympathy, yet Sam sensed an underlying true concern and even desperation in the question.

Sam studied the board intently as he pondered his answer. He might possibly be able to find a new vein of the ore, but they likely had sensors for detection better than any he had ever dreamt of. The most obvious solution would be to move the mine to a more profitable location, but that was not always financially acceptable. Equipment could be moved, but years or even decades worth of tunnels couldn’t be, even if a more favorable location could be found.

On Earth, once a mine had petered out, often a new way of mining was implemented, to eke out the last dregs of the resource. Sometimes, a less valuable yet still profitable alternate mineral or substance was discovered, and the mine converted to retrieve that resource instead. On rare occasion, an even more valuable substance was discovered, and once in a lifetime, something no one had previously even known about.

Once Earth had nearly exhausted many of her resources, and recycling had been maximized, they had survived by mining asteroids, moons and then even the other planets for the resources they needed, and mission plans were underway for expansion of those efforts outside the solar system.

“There’s an expression where I’m from, ‘Fortune favors the foolish.’ Perhaps this unworthy General will have the underserved fortune of finding someone able to assist him. Though as a General, I clearly would never be so fortunate. I concede victory to you. You will kill my Rebel Leader in thirteen moves at best, six at worst.” Sam tipped over his Rebel Leader, his equivalent of an Emperor, in acknowledgement of the defeat.

“Galra once again emerges victorious,” Derkon stated, putting feeling into the rote phrase.

Sam had asked when they first played what he should say were he to win, and Derkon had replied. “You cannot win. You are playing the Rebel Forces. It is Galra who always wins.”

“Perhaps someday I will have the honor of playing on the side of Galra,” Sam carefully commented.

“Loyalty to the Empire is rewarded,” Derkon agreed.

_Which conversely silently states that disloyalty is punished. That the guards and Overseer Kavreti are being punished. Is Kavreti the General, or is the General above him? What transgression did Kavreti and the others commit, to get them relegated there? Or were the others sentenced there merely for being his subordinates?_

That night, Sam didn’t sleep, both out of fear of impending retaliation by his fellow prisoners and thinking about Derkon’s message. But the attack, when it came, did not come from within.


	6. Understanding the Gravity of the Situation

The ship’s deck shuddered beneath Sam’s cot, as the lights dimmed to red, and an alarm began to shrill. His fellow prisoners were instantly awakened, jabbering wildly in dozens of different languages, eying the cargo bay doors leading to the ship’s corridor, some in excitement, but others in fear. Sam stood too, scanning his surroundings warily.

_Has the ship malfunctioned? I still hear the blowers, the atmosphere is still circulating, but it looks like there’s been a decrease in our power supply._

The ship shuddered again, more violently this time, and there was the distant sound of what ominously sounded like an explosion. Sam was thrown against the bulkhead, his ankle shackles making it impossible to spread his legs wide enough to keep his balance. His desperate efforts to catch himself were hampered by the manacles that still bound his hands together as well, and his head cracked against the metal wall. The hand that went to his throbbing temple came away red. He blinked as the dripping blood seeped through the eyelashes over his left eye, hoping the cut wasn’t too deep, that he wasn’t bleeding too badly and that it wouldn’t become infected.

There were some additional muffled explosions.

_Is that weapons fire? Are we under attack?_

He’d no sooner wondered than unexpectedly he began to float. Their gravity generators must have been destroyed, or disabled. He grabbed frantically for a pipe that was protruding from the bulkhead, and wrapped his arm around it. If the gravity came back on as unexpectedly as it had shut off, he didn’t want to be in for a nasty fall.

His fellow prisoners were reacting to the loss of gravity in a mixture of panic, confusion and determination. Only one of them displayed pure, uninhibited joy. The formerly crushed Faerie was flying, dipping, soaring and darting, twisting and turning with the speed and grace and beauty of a hummingbird, his movements almost too fast for the eye to see, his frantically beating wings a buzzing hum of sound.

But then there was an ominous clang from the opposite side of the cargo bay, from the enormous double doors that Sam assumed led to space, and the Faerie stilled, cocking his head in a listening position, attention snapping to the far wall. And then he dove to the ground, lacing his limbs around a different pipe, even as with a sense of impending dread, Sam laced his other arm through the pipe he had been anchored to and wrapped his hands about his opposite wrists, as he saw a few others doing. Vainly he yelled a warning to those of his fellow prisoners who seemed either unaware of the pending danger or too stunned to act, even though he knew they wouldn’t be able to understand. “Grab something, anything! I think they’re going to breach the-“

His words were torn away, everything was torn away, including the air, as the cargo doors vanished in a boom and screech of tortured metal. The improvised chairs and table he and Derkon had used, and then every other crate, pallet and slave near the breach was sucked through the gaping opening, into the maw of what appeared to be a second ship, which blotted out the stars, as emergency claxons sounded in the rapidly diminishing air, until with a harsh clang a second set of metal doors unexpectedly dropped down from the ceiling, sealing off the breach and the gruesome image of the dozens of slaves still spiraling out into space, looks of horror eternally etched on their screaming, frozen faces.

“Don’t breach the emergency bulkhead, don’t kill me, please don’t kill me! I have to save Matt and Shiro, I have a wife and daughter, too, and I’m only 55. I don’t want to die,” Sam pleaded, not knowing who he was begging, his wife’s God or their attackers, even as gravity miraculously returned.

Both arms wrenched, as his full weight suddenly dragged him downwards. Most of the few dozen remaining slaves fell helplessly to the floor, though a few quicker thinking or luckier ones like him were also left dangling from different protrusions in the ship’s wall. The Faerie had been close to the floor but he looked even more crushed than before, after having experience zero gravity temporarily.

When the door to the corridor opened, he didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified, especially when armed men started pouring through in spacesuits, some of them blackened and burnt looking in places, others with what appeared to be makeshift patches on limbs and helmets. But it became clear they were the ship’s crew and guards when they ignored the slaves, and instead set up some sort of defensive perimeter facing the emergency bulkhead, laying down pieces of equipment, even as others began operating lifts and transporting the smaller, more portable cargo out into the corridor.

But then one of them began addressing the slaves, his personal translator both amplifying and simultaneously translating his words into English, or for the others, clearly to whatever language they spoke, telepathically, or however it worked. It was a technology level so far advanced that it was akin to magic, to Sam.

“Head into the corridor if you want to live. There are guards waiting for you, to lead you to a safer hold. But if you act against us, we’ll kill you, and you’ve already seen the mercy the pirates have shown your friends. They’re here for our other cargo and don’t care how many of us and you they kill to get it. We’re all enemies to them.”

Sam recognized Derkon’s voice in frantic relief, frowning in worry as he realized the Galran’s left arm was hanging awkwardly at his side, although that some sort of rifle was cradled in his right arm, pressed against his opposite side. Sam risked the two story drop to the floor, hoping he wouldn’t land too badly.

Derkon spun at the sound of his loud landing, the gun raising to fire, as Sam’s hands flew into the air and he realized he’d made a potentially deadly mistake. “Don’t shoot!”

Thankfully Derkon aborted his attack. “You’re still alive! Evacuate, follow their orders. Don’t get yourself shot,” Derkon demanded gruffly.

“Are you going to be alright?” Sam asked worriedly.

“I’ll live, if any of us do. And if I die, I die for Galra. Go,” Derkon ordered.

“Thank you,” Sam replied, his thanks heartfelt. He had the feeling that Derkon was probably the one who had wanted to save them, that the rest of the guards wouldn’t have cared if they died in whatever counteroffensive they were launching against the pirates. He wished he could help, somehow, but knew that all he could do was get himself to safety with the others, as ordered.

He was nearly to the door when his eyes fell on the Faerie creature. Unlike the rest of them, he had full use of his arms and feet, but he was slowly and painfully futilely attempting to drag himself towards the doorway. He would be too slow to reach safety, and likely trampled in the attempt.

Without a second thought, Sam raced over to him. The creature recoiled, a look of pleading and terror on his entrancing face.

“Let me help you,” Sam begged, crouching down and wrapping his arm around the ethereal being without waiting for a response, hoping he didn’t have some sort of dangerous bio-protective ability that he might unleash upon him.

To Sam’s relief, the Faerie was indeed as lightweight as he appeared and apparently incapable of harming him, or perhaps realized he truly wished to aid him. He realized the alien could not have weighed much more than 60 pounds, as he lifted him into his arms. Practically unencumbered, Sam headed into the corridor, obediently following the directions of the few guards lining it, weapons drawn and pointed at them.

Sam was a corridor away, when another large boom shook the ship. _The cargo bay. They blew it open again. Is Derkon still alive?_

The ship shuddered and lurched, as if rocked by another explosion or explosive decompression, but this time, there was no sound accompanying it. Then suddenly there was a fierce roar of sound. It took a few moments to realize that it was the sound of cheering over the intercom system. He was prodded into another room with his precious burden, this one much smaller than the previous cargo hold, stacked to the ceiling with all manner of crates, boxes and shipping containers, though there were a set of metal rings set into the opposite wall.

It soon became apparent that their manacles and shackles were going to be affixed, that they’d have even less freedom of movement than before, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to care. The added restraint would keep the other prisoners from harming him, and for now, he was alive and breathing, relatively uninjured, last he’d seen, the single person who had somewhat befriended him was still alive too, and he’d saved a life. As his days were passing, lately, he’d definitely count this one as a win.

0 0 0

What he calculated as four additional days passed, from the meals he counted, but to Sam’s concern, Derkon failed to reappear. He wasn’t sure whether that meant the guard was dead, recovering from his injury or that he’d been injured far worse. Fortunately, though no one had come to tend to their injuries, he wasn’t doing too badly. The bleeding from his forehead had stopped before it could weaken him dangerously, and it did not appear to be infected. It would likely scar, but his hair would cover it, and Colleen hadn’t married him for his looks, after all. The thought of her was far more painful than his injury had been.

Many of the other surviving slaves were in far worse shape, some clearly having suffered broken bones or other serious injury when the gravity was restored. He would survive, for now, but he was beginning to despair of ever seeing Colleen or Katie or Matt or Shiro, any of his beloved family, again. He had no control over his future, no solid plans, and the only person who might theoretically have possibly been an ally was gone.

A gentle finger weakly caressed his knuckle and the panic and despair that had been flooding him vanished instantly.

“No, not my only ally. I have you. How are you feeling? Do you need some more water?” he offered Silph. He still wasn’t sure if that was really the alien Faerie’s name, or if the gentle whisper in his mind days ago amidst the tinkling sound of bells and haunting music had been his imagination, but his new companion didn’t seem to mind being addressed by the name.

Remarkably, the former antagonism and hostility he’d unintentionally generated amongst his fellow captives from his acquaintanceship with Derkon was completely eradicated with his rescue and befriending of Silph. A handful of others had aided injured prisoners out of the cargo bay, but they had been aliens of their same species, or those he’d seen actually knew one another as friends. He was the only one to rescue a stranger he had no previous ties to. They now looked at Sam with the same differential awe and reverence they had reserved for Silph. Apparently by rescuing an angel, he had somehow become deified.

There was a weakly musical sound like the chiming of a thousand tiny bells that Sam had heard only once before, which he’d surmised was laughter, reinforcing his suspicion that Silph was telepathic as well as empathic, that he was somehow able to understand his alien thoughts as well as his feelings. Silph had gently altered the latter more than once, when Sam’s feelings had become too dark, but he didn’t believe he’d modified the former.

A feeling of shock and horror flooded him and the hand jerked away.

Sam’s hand immediately darted out and stilled Silph’s retreat. _“Forgive me! I didn’t mean that as an accusation. I didn’t mean to hurt you,”_ Sam apologized silently. _“I’m not used to someone hearing my every thought. Just because I think something doesn’t mean I truly believe it. I think and discard hundreds, even thousands of things. My mind isn’t nearly as orderly as those of your race must be. I’m used to filtering my thoughts into words. But I’ll try to be more focused, more careful, I promise.”_ The last thing he wanted was to alienate his only friend.

There was a soft humming sound, reassuring and soothing, almost like the purring of a cat, or like a father singing a lullaby to his child. Colleen was a wonderful wife and mother, but she couldn’t carry a tune if she’d had a suitcase to put it in. He was the one who had sung his sometimes cranky and always fidgety children to sleep.

Sam deliberately concentrated on his breathing, until it became deep and slow and easy. “Thank you,” he said both aloud and silently, in gratitude, as his troubled thoughts quieted.

0 0 0

In spite of his own injury, Derkon was worried for Sam. Not only because he felt a genuine liking for him, as well as his usual compassion for any slave’s plight, but because Kavreti needed him. Emperor Zarkon had set his disgraced former General up to fail in the most tortuous manner possible, by surrounding him with the subordinates whose careers he’d also destroyed when he’d argued against obliterating Sidhe, the homeworld of the Aos Sí. It was the height of cruelly intentional irony that they now had onboard one of the few known survivors of that mystical race, salt upon Overseer Kavreti’s wounds, a mere fledgling, who had so far exhibited none of the fantastical mental and magical powers his race was known for.

How this one had escaped falling into the Druids’ hands Derkon didn’t know, though he suspected one of his fellow Blade of Marmora members had a hand in his transfer to Tangier. As likely as not, Ulaz. He was known for impetuous and irrational acts of kindness, and Tangier had only one fifth the gravity of most of the planets they exploited for their mines. There were, of course, no millennia old trees or crystal waterfalls on Tangier, though there once had been. Decades of exploitation had completely obliterated the planet’s once thriving ecosystem. But at least the fragile and delicate Aos Sí would be able to walk, and even fly.

Sam Holt was just as softhearted as Ulaz. Every member of every race knew that to touch an Aos Sí was to summon madness. But he had somehow escaped unscathed, or so the other guards had muttered. And his bold action had gained him the awe and respect of their other slaves, who remembered when the now crushed Aos Sí Empire once spanned half a galaxy or more. Until the Galra had systematically destroyed them. They had been too complacent in their reign, too confident in their power, in the awe and reverence the other races held them in to ever conceive that another race might seek to destroy them. Might Emperor Zarkon one day make such a fatal error.

Thankfully he might yet live to see it, since his plan to set explosives in the cargo bay to destroy the pirate ship when it retrieved the remainder of the hold’s cargo had succeeded. As long as their limping ship reached Tangier without being set upon by another ship, he might yet live to fight another day alongside his fellow Blades. But first he needed to make it out of Sickbay, preferably before they landed. If he missed his rendezvous with Kavreti, his increasingly sardonic, desperate and embittered cousin might think him killed and seek to avenge him, or simply to end his exile in a blaze of glory.


	7. Providing Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing from my readers! I always respond to Comments personally, often with story tidbits and sometimes even sneak peeks. Please leave Kudos and Comments if you’re enjoying the story, and thanks again to those of you who have! Here’s some of what’s coming next:
> 
> Chapter 8 – Silver Lining (Sam, Silph, Thace, Kavreti, and Savreen)  
> Chapter 9 – Volatile Mix (Lotor and Matt)  
> Chapter 10 – Teach Me (Lotor and Matt)  
> Chapter 11 – A Helping Hand (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and “spoiler”)  
> Chapter 12 – Intervention (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and Thace)  
> Chapter 13 – Oath of Allegiance, Blood of Betrayal (Lotor and Thace)

The door to Kavreti’s office flung open, and he nearly put an energy bolt through his former Captain’s head before realizing just in time that it was her and not an assassin. It was a testament to her excitement that Savreen scarcely broke stride after evasively diving to the right. “General Kavreti, sir! _Profit’s Promise_ has been detected. They’re only a planet away,” she reported breathlessly.

Kavreti felt a flood of relief, even as he silently cursed the pathetic inadequacy of their all but useless sensors. They were fortunate it was the cargo ship they’d been expecting and not an attack. They would have had no time to prepare a defense, had it been some sort of enemy. Not that they had much to defend with.

He didn’t bother chiding Savreen for using his former title, or even for her foolish risk in bursting into his office unannounced, since he shared her immense relief. The ship was three days overdue, but also, the supplies it was bringing, vital food, medicine, machinery and new slaves, should have been received a full month earlier. They’d all started to fear that perhaps the Emperor had decided to watch them slowly starve to death without even waiting for them to fail to meet the quota of their next shipment. Of course, they’d be dead within two months anyway, when they indeed failed to meet their quota.

Privately, though, Kavreti had worried it had meant that Derkon, his fellow Blade, had been discovered. “Well then, let’s go greet them, shall we?” He rose slowly and deliberately, straightening his uniform. 

It wasn’t until the ship was landing that they realized there was apparently a valid reason for the delay, though the ship had not transmitted it, quite likely because its communications system wasn’t functioning properly. Kavreti’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the blatant battle damage and then widened and his stomach dropped when the ship turned and he saw the port cargo bay doors had been blasted away, and the bay itself was empty. _The food, medicine, machinery, slaves. How much did we lose? Was Derkon inside the bay when the doors were breached?_

The loaders that had been hovering like ravening keshem over a scalra carcass stilled.

The ramp descended, and the ship’s Captain, Nestral, emerged, flanked by four guards, looking the worse for wear. Even more troubling, none of the four guards was Derkon.

“Quiznak,” Kavreti swore softly, and then he headed over to the base of the ramp to greet them.

“ _Overseer_ Kavreti,” Captain Nestral stated, a hair’s breadth too little emphasis on his demoted rank to justify killing him for it.

“Captain Nestral. Rebels or pirates?” Kavreti challenged boldly. He had little left to lose, especially if Derkon was dead and most of their supplies were gone.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “The Empire is absolute. There are no rebels. Pirates, however, continue to plague the lesser, outer systems like this one. Although one less ship, now, thanks to my brilliant counteroffensive.”

Kavreti ground his teeth, careful not to do it loudly enough that the arrogant, braggart of a Captain might hear them. “So you saved all our food, medical supplies, machinery and slaves.” He phrased it as a statement, knowing full well that, had it been phrased as a question, the answer would have been “no”.

The Captain stiffened, thrusting the manifest towards him. “Even a soldier with your level of competence can clearly see the cargo bay was breached.”

Savreen stiffened at his side but didn’t gut the Captain for it for the same reason he didn’t. They weren’t only at Emperor Zarkon’s mercy, but that of his soldiers.

“I’d offer our medical facilities to your wounded crew members, but we appear to be out of supplies,” he countered bitingly.

“You’ll offer them anyway and use as much as we need of what medicines we bring you. And you’ll assist us in repairing our vessel, as any _loyal_ soldier would,” the Captain snapped scathingly.

“Of course. After all, we all fight for Galra,” Kavreti agreed, keeping the sarcasm out of his voice through an effort of will. “Savreen, please see to the Captain’s and his crew’s needs. I’ll log the cargo personally.” _And hopefully Derkon will somehow miraculously appear and make this detestable day bearable._

Only a single krone later, when the last of the pathetically inadequate remainder of the crated supplies were offloaded, and the new slaves were escorted down the ramp, the day took an unexpectedly worse turn as mockingly, one of the aliens that had cost him his rank and his future, and those of his men, emerged from the ship, actually shockingly carried by an alien of a species he’d never seen before, but one who looked painfully similar to an Altaean, and certainly had the balls of one, to court madness by bonding to even a fledgling fosterling Aos Sí as that one clearly was.  

And then suddenly the Aos Sí was aloft, and in the blink of an eye, gone, before weapons could be raised against him. The alien who had been carrying him looked startled and then bereft, but only for a moment, before a wild look of elation lit his face, even as the rest of the slaves watched the Aos Sí disappear enviously, clearly believing he was successfully escaping, instead of signing his own death warrant.

Kavreti signaled to his men to be extra alert watching the other slaves. Until Nestral and his ship were gone, and any potential spies routed out from amongst the new slaves, he couldn’t inform them of their new status as emancipated yet still temporarily trapped beings. But he needed to get the fledgling back, if he was to survive. He headed for the slave who had been carrying the bane of his former career.

The alien stiffened at his approach, clearly expecting punishment, but he didn’t try to run. Not that he could have gotten far in shackles, with armed guards all around him.

“You need to summon your foster son back. We stripped this planet bare of all life save for ourselves decades ago. He can’t survive here outside our mining operation. The only source of quintessence left on this lifeless rock lies within,” Kavreti stated baldly. Anyone listening would assume he meant they were the only life, but thanks to Savreen’s passion, there was more here for all of them than anyone might otherwise suspect.

“Foster…? He’s not my son. I just aided him for a few days. But if you’re so concerned about his wellbeing, why were your people so cruel? It was the ship that was killing him, the gravity. It was crushing him,” the alien accused, in blatant disregard for his own survival.

“Their species is far more resilient than they appear. If he had been a fully grown Aos Sí, come into his powers, he would have been able to use those powers to his aid. What is truly remarkable is that you are clearly neither dead nor insane. Which means he allowed you to touch him, even hold him, without harming you. For an Aos Sí that young, that means he’s imprinted on you as a child to a parent. You may not think of him as your son, but he thinks of you as his father. If he was older, it would have meant he’d mated you, that you were husbands,” he explained patiently.

The alien’s eyes widened in disbelief or shock or alarm. “Aos Sí? Is that really what his species is called? You mean he actually really is a _Faerie_? They’re real? How... starve? That there’s no food elsewhere on the planet? No life at all?”

Kavreti had no idea what a _Faerie_ was, apparently a proper name for the species in his local dialect. Clearly although he’d apparently been oblivious to his status, his greater concern was for the child than what could have happened to him.

“He feeds on quintessence, and not just the fading traces of it in food. He needs to feed from it directly, from living plants and animals, to siphon the life’s energy from them. The way he must have been feeding off you, without your knowledge. Without a source of life, he’ll die,” Kavreti stated truthfully.

The alien looked stunned. “You’re trying to tell me that gentle, fragile being, a child, is some sort of… psychic _vampire_ that wants to prey on all of us?” he asked incredulously. “Why should I believe you? You’re wrong. He hasn’t harmed me. You just want your ‘property’ back.”

Kavreti frowned at the word that didn’t translate. He wondered what a _vampire_ might be.

The effect of his frown on the alien was surprising, considering how outspoken he had been.

He bowed his head and quickly stated. “Forgive me. I meant no disrespect.”

He wasn’t crouched and flinching in the way of someone who has been beaten before, but he did appear braced for a blow. Likely a relatively new slave then, still learning how to survive.

“Of course you didn’t. You just called me a delusional self-interested lying bastard,” Kavreti replied wryly.

The slave’s head jerked up, and the look upon his face was priceless.

Kavreti laughed, a deep hearty boom, the tension from seeing the Aos Sí momentarily evaporating. He slapped the alien heartily on the back, and caught him when he stumbled forward. “It takes a deeply moral being to protect a life at risk of his own, especially not one of his species. You will do well here. But you need to summon him back. You must have formed a psychic bond with him. Call him, when it’s safe to, once the crew from _Profit’s Promise_ isn’t outside where they might shoot him. Savreen!”

She appeared at his shoulder with that unerring ability she had to be exactly where he needed her. “See that this slave is protected. The others might be suspicious of him for my having singled him out and spoken with him. I am Overseer Kavreti, and this is my Assistant, Savreen. What is your name?”

0 0 0

Sam was surprised. A chip had been inserted under the skin of his wrist, soon after he was captured, one that glowed with alien characters when a scanner was passed over it. He had been told that number would be used in place of his name from now on, and that he needed to memorize and respond to the last four digits any time they were called, because slaves were too stupid to remember more than that. It was dehumanizing and demoralizing to have even his name stripped from him. But first Derkon and now this new Overseer asked for his name.

_Is it a test to see whether I’m rebellious?_ He’d listened attentively and memorized the entire number, and Matt’s and Shiro’s as well: Matt’s was 7562 and Shiro was 7563, they’d differed only be the single digit. Which meant the number likely corresponded to many billions of slaves. But he didn’t think the number was what he was being asked for.

“I am now 63795214687561, but I was formerly called Sam Holt,” he risked. After a brief hesitation, debating the wisdom of mentioning it, he confessed, “I’m a xenogeologist. As such, I believe I can be of greater use to you than as a manual laborer.” Sam hoped he’d kept his recognition Kavreti’s own name from showing. _This_ was the General that Derkon had mentioned, the one who had apparently lost his rank for disobeying orders. He wondered what the story behind that was. He wouldn’t have risked mentioning his profession if he knew whether Derkon was still alive, but this might be one of his only opportunities to show his value.

The Overseer’s eyes narrowed in speculation, while his Assistant looked as inscrutable as a Sphinx.

“Perhaps you might. We will speak again later. Now that the medical supplies have been offloaded, I need to see that the wounded from the ship are transferred to our Infirmary, and assess what repairs the Captain needs to get his ship fully flight-worthy again. We wouldn’t want to delay his departure, after all,” Kavreti stated dryly.

“Thank you, sir,” Sam stated in heartfelt relief that he hadn’t overstepped, even as he wondered at Kavreti’s words and tried to assess his character, from what little he’d heard from Derkon, and what he’d witnessed firsthand.

0 0 0

Kavreti’s alarm at seeing Derkon amongst the wounded to be transferred to the Infirmary was equaled by his relief at finding him alive, if injured. He didn’t reveal his strong emotions, however. No Blade ever betrayed his relationship to another, regardless of the circumstances.

However, as soon as they were both away from the ship’s crew, in the Infirmary, in a private room sectioned off from the others, out of earshot of the other patients, they spoke in depth about the attack, as well as the news Derkon had initially planned to share, had his flight been uneventful. Kavreti was intrigued to hear that the alien Sam Holt had caught his attention as well, over doogresh, of all things, and eager to hear all Derkon had learned about him.

“So he’s intelligent, quick witted, honest, moral, and sometimes outspoken, and a xenogeologist. How certain are you that he’s not a spy? He seems too good to be true,” Kavreti challenged, after Derkon informed him of everything he knew of the slave.

“If he is, he won’t be the first or the last. His actions will speak for him. No one expects mining slaves to live. If he needs to die in an accident, like those other spies for the Empire, so be it. But I think he might instead be of assistance. I could see him thinking about all the ways he might make the mine more productive again, though he didn’t share his thoughts with me, and I did not press him,” Derkon admitted.

“Hopefully he will live up to your expectations. If our next ship isn’t carrying enough to justify this operation, the supply ships will likely just stop coming, and we’ll be left here to starve to death and then rot. Perhaps if I’m lucky a flower will grow from my moldering corpse, and I’ll have returned life to this dead world,” Kavreti stated wryly. But there was more resignation than humor in his voice.

“Stop thinking like that. You’re not going to die here. We won’t let you,” Derkon chastised.

“You won’t be able to risk saving me, not if we hope to find what we seek,” Kavreti argued. He dared not say the words “Red Lion” aloud while Nestral and his crew were still on this misbegotten rock heap.

“There’s only one of us remotely in a position of power enough to save me, and he dares not associate with someone Zarkon has condemned,” Kavreti argued, not daring to risk speaking his name, though if anyone had overheard any part of what they had already spoken, they would both be dead and their network exposed.

He hadn’t seen Thace since his disgrace and exile. He hoped he never would. But it was likely a fool’s wish. Thace was too like his Sword Brother Ulaz, far too kindhearted to be a spy and assassin. Kavreti’s greatest fear was that the two of them would reveal themselves trying to save others, and perish, as so very many of House Marmora already had over the millennia.

“Even he isn’t foolish enough to risk exposure by coming here,” Derkon assured him.

0 0 0

“You’re certain that’s not _Profit’s Promise_?  Even with the bodies we found? Those are clearly our slaves,” Thace argued, seeing the distinctive gray tunic and black leggings on the corpse the camera was focused upon. None of those he’d seen had appeared human, but he had seen only a handful of them close range on the sensors.

“Yes, Commander. But that’s not _Profit’s Promise_. From the analysis of the debris, that ship was larger, and newer,” Lieutenant Tireen argued, drawing his attention to the data. He detailed the results of their scans, all of which pointed to the wreckage they had discovered as belonging to a pirate ship, apparently one that had attacked and damaged the cargo transport.

“But still no communications from the transport?” Thace asked, frustrated.

“No sir. But their comm system could easily have been damaged in the battle. They were only minimally armed, and should theoretically not have been able to destroy a craft designed for battle,” the Lieutenant suggested.

“Then we proceed to their destination, to make certain they arrived. Though we haven’t been able to reach Tangier either?” Thace asked anxiously.

“No sir. But their communications system is known for being unreliable,” the Lieutenant replied, keeping his voice carefully level. To have sounded at all rueful could be interpreted as criticism, and therefore treason, and been grounds for immediate termination by his superior.

_You mean a piece of junk. An embarrassment to your glorious Empire._

“Let me know immediately if that changes. And keep on alert. Where there was one pirate ship, there might well be others, especially if they’ve realized Tangier is ill protected,” Thace cautioned.

“Yes, Commander,” Lieutenant Tireen replied.

He was days away from potentially learning about his son. The slim hope was a foolish one, he knew, but the House of Marmora had survived for 10,000 years in the very heart of their enemy by nursing far more tenuous dreams.

0 0 0

Sam worried about Silph, as he was led to the slaves barracks, one of four identical looking long, low buildings. If what the Galran Overseer had told him was true, and not merely an attempt to get an escaped slave back, Silph was in grave danger here.

He entered and scanned the rows of narrow, neatly made beds, with a footlocker at the base of each. It looked painfully similar to the military barracks of the Garrison.

“You’ll stay here, in quarantine and isolation from our other slaves, until we determine it is safe to integrate you. Take any bed, but choose carefully. Once you claim it, we’ll scan your chip and log it as yours, as well as the chest at the base of it. You’re responsible for keeping your bed and chest in order. Once you obtain coveralls and personal grooming products, according to your species, you will place those items in your chest. You will be responsible for keeping your body and clothing and bed clean. Rations are strictly to be consumed in the Commissary. Smuggling of rations to the Barracks is prohibited. Stealing rations, clothing, bedding or possessions from another slave or a guard is prohibited. Failing to follow regulations will result in punishment. Choose your bed and stand beside it until it is recorded. Then line up by the door for escort to the Quartermaster.”

Sam was surprised they were allowing them to choose their own beds, inside of assigning them. He would have expected random assignment would break up whatever friend or family groups there might have been amongst the 72 surviving slaves, 71 without Silph, to lower the chance of whispered conspiracies in the middle of the night. There had been 120 slaves, before the pirate attack. 48 slaves had been sucked into the cold vacuum of space and died.

Most of the slaves chose beds in the back, but Sam chose the bed second closest to the door, on the right. He left the one closest to the door for Silph, for when he returned, because there were no windows in the barracks, but at least he’d be able to see the ground and sky whenever the door opened.

His bed and footlocker were one of the first to be recorded, and he headed obediently into line by the door. Once they were all in line, they were escorted to another building, to obtain clothing and grooming products, which were distributed to them based upon their species, or the closest approximation, apparently, since no one seemed confused by one of the three captured Terrans. Unless some of those fabled abduction stories were true, and humans had been captured on Earth throughout history. Sam was relieved to see the coveralls, underwear, socks and boots he was given looked sturdier than what he was wearing, a lot more like what he was used to.

They were brought to a communal shower next, where thankfully their manacles and shackles were removed, and were divided into seven groups, apparently according to generic species type, and instructed to bathe. It was a chemical instead of water shower, Sam discovered, so it made sense different species would have different needs. Once done, they were instructed to dress in their new clothes, and miraculously, their manacles and shackles were left behind. Sam felt ridiculously light and free, walking without their restrictive weight, particularly in the weaker gravity of the planet.

Then there were taken to what they were told was the Infirmary, and divided into smaller groups, again according to species type, and taken into a waiting room. They would apparently be undergoing a medical exam.

“7561,” a put upon sounding voice called. Sam immediately rose and headed for the Galran, his heart rate increasing. He’d been healthy before his capture, but he’d definitely lost weight since he was taken, and he hadn’t been very muscular to start. What would happen if they decided he wasn’t strong enough to work?

Sam was taken to an examination room, where a series of scans were performed by a technician. Then, unexpectedly, he was interviewed. Not a health interview, or even strictly a psychological interview, but also a personal and professional history, more like a job interview, but far more complex, including questions about his name, family, planet of origin, and a vast and dizzying array of others.

When that was done, he was escorted to a larger joint waiting room. When everyone was finished, to his surprise, they were led to the Commissary. The food was a dubious green paste, but it was edible, and surprisingly not vile, in spite of the color and consistency, and the portion was larger than what they had been given aboard ship.

When they were done, they were escorted back to the Barracks and told to stow their meager gear in their lockers and await assignment. It was there that Sam realized there were no longer 71 of them.  There were only 70. He tried to figure out who was missing. An image of a reddish brown lizardlike alien came to mind. He had kept at a distance aboard ship, either from Sam or Silph, he wasn’t sure which. Sam hadn’t tried to befriend his fellow prisoners. He’d had his hands full with Silph, literally.

_Silph. Are you alright? Don’t come back yet. Kavreti said the ship guards might shoot you. Wait until the ship is gone._ He had no idea whether Silph could hear him from where he was. He could have been on the other side of the planet.


	8. Silver Lining

Sam was again the first to be called, for what he was told would be his work assignment. But to his consternation, he was taken back to the Infirmary. He had no expertise in medicine, only the same emergency first aid refresher courses all Garrison soldiers were taught each year of their service, following their Academy graduation.

He felt his heart rate begin to spike. _Or am I here for something else? Experimentation?_ Silph had told him some horrifying things regarding a powerful religious sect called the Druids, who had decimated his people. _Or did I fail the questioning before, somehow? Am I just going to disappear, like the lizard alien?_

He was escorted to a door and trepidatiously entered. His anxiety instantly turned to relief, and joy. “Derkon! You’re alive!” he headed for the bed and then jerked to a stop, looking anxiously over his shoulder, but the door was now closed, and there was no sign of the guard.

Derkon was sitting upright in bed, with something that looked like an IV feeding into his right arm. His left arm was encased in what appeared to be a soft cast, from fingertips to shoulder, but he must have been injured elsewhere that he couldn’t immediately see, since a broken arm alone wouldn’t have justified being in bed, or the IV.

“Sam. I am pleased you survived also, that you look as well as I heard. I was unable to leave the Sickbay and ensure your safety. I was particularly concerned for your sanity, when I saw you aid the Aos Sí, but I thank you for going to his aid, when I could not. A close friend risked his life transferring him onto our transport, away from those who would have caused him unspeakable harm, even though by doing so, he could have caused great harm. It speaks strongly to your compassion and morality that you did so,” Derkon stated solemnly.

_Derkon called him an Aos S_ _í too. A Faerie. The legends are actually real? Their species lives on Earth? Or used to? Were we a colony? They couldn’t have evolved there, or there would be fossil evidence. There still should be. But that’s not important right now. Kavreti said something about morality too, about me being moral, that I’d do well here because of it. So they keep slaves, but value morality. So slave owning isn’t immoral. But Derkon mentioned compassion too. And I have yet to see any of that amongst his people, save perhaps from him._

“We hope that you will again be willing to aid, not only your fellow slaves, but the rest of those sentenced here. I mentioned General Kavreti to you, but here is safe enough, for the moment, that I may say more. You need to know why he and a handful of his crew have been sentenced here. Their crime was balking at the order to obliterate Sidhe, the Aos Sí homeworld, our final act of conquest of their Empire.

“Their planet was the cultural hub of that arm of their galaxy. Their planet’s entire mantle had been hollowed out and turned into a library and art museum, containing multiple millennia of works by every culture in their Empire, invaluable, irreplaceable. It was rumored they had even preserved a number of works from Altaea herself. But Sidhe was far more. It was literally the heart and soul of their race. Every Aos Sí marriage was consecrated there. Every Aos Sí child was born there. It was not only the Aos Sí Imperial Seat, but a temple and maternity ward and nursery, a library and museum.

“General Kavreti sent an impassioned plea to Emperor Zarkon himself, detailing the value of all that would be lost. The Emperor’s response was immediate and merciless. Kavreti and his command crew were arrested and stripped of their rank by their own men. They were shackled, and forced to watch their ship, their crew, destroy the planet they had tried to save. Then they were transported here, to this dead world, sentenced to life in exile, unless and until they could once again prove their value to the Empire. Because death by torture would have been too merciful. For a Galran, life without honor or rank is a far worse fate,” Derkon admitted.

Sam was horrified and confused. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because their exile was still a death sentence, just a slower one. If this petered out gold mine doesn’t become productive again, if it doesn’t meet a shipping quota within the next two months, everyone here is going to die anyway. It won’t be a quick death, either. The supply ships won’t come, and everyone will slowly starve to death. The gold is depleted, there are no other veins, but we are hoping there is something else of value here. But we had neither the equipment we need to analyze for it, nor the specialists needed to know what to look for. And then you were sentenced here,” Derkon explained.

“But if the Emperor truly wants them dead, even if you found something of value here, would it matter?” Sam asked.

“Theoretically, in the long run, no. It would just delay the inevitable. But it would buy them some time, and sometimes, time is all you truly need,” Derkon stated.

There was a bigger picture, something Sam wasn’t seeing, and something Derkon wasn’t saying.

“I’m a slave. You could have just ordered me to work for you,” Sam stated.

“Yes, we could have. But we believe a willing and sympathetic worker is far more valuable and productive than one who is forced. Please help them, Sam. We can’t afford to lose them, any of them. Military commanders of their caliber are the one resource our Empire values least, but needs most,” Derkon urged.

“So why would your friend send Silph here, knowing he would die? And there were 71 slaves brought into the Barracks. Now there are only 70. What happened to the reddish brown reptilian alien?” Sam challenged boldly.

Derkon frowned, looking surprised by the question, and then his eyes grew shuttered.

“I’ll answer those questions,” a voice said from behind, and Sam jumped and spun.

Kavreti entered the room from a different door, one that looked like it led to a bathroom.

“As you’ve heard, those of us here are not currently in the Emperor’s good graces,” Kavreti stated wryly. “Were we as far away from the Emperor’s sphere of influence as we should be, here, we might pose a danger to him. So we are watched. At least one spy is mixed in with each new batch of slaves sent here. You will have noticed that our medical and psychological exam is a little more extensive than most, for a number of reasons, some of which you will learn later, if you earn that right, but one reason is so that any such spies might be discovered.

“Mines are dangerous. A certain amount of attrition is to be expected. As newer workers are less skilled, it is standard practice for them to be assigned the more dangerous tasks, because they are of the least value. According to our records, a number of you will not survive your first month here,” Kavreti stated calmly.

Sam stared at him in horror. _You killed him. And he won’t be the only one to die. You… No. Wait. ‘According to our records’. Meaning something else will happen to us? What could….? Wait. An underground railroad? Is he trying to tell me they somehow smuggle slaves supposedly killed in the mine off planet? No. Then they could leave as well. Unless there is another reason for them to be here?_

“You’re right. He is sharp. He’ll make a damn fine doogresh player, if he learns not to betray everything he’s thinking on his face, if he lives long enough,” Kavreti told Derkon pointedly.

 _Shit. They’re testing me. And I passed part of it and failed part._ “I’ll live long enough to learn,” Sam stated confidently. Because Matt and Shiro, Colleen and Katie still needed him. He wasn’t about to fail his family.

0 0 0

Sam’s new job of analyzing the blackened waste ore piled into the closest of a series of filled canyons proved laughably easy. The gold might have petered out, but the ore was rich with heavily tarnished silver. Thanks to a summer job at a processing facility during his undergraduate years, Sam even knew how to minimally process the ore to make shipping it off planet not only economically viable, but profitable, after examining their existing equipment and crunching the numbers with Kavreti’s former captain, Savreen, who seemed to be a woman-of-all-trades.

Two days after his arrival, he watched the cargo ship they’d arrived on depart with mixed emotions. Derkon had left with them. He liked Derkon, trusted him to a degree, but he wasn’t certain what to make of Kavreti or his people.

The ship was barely swallowed by the clouds when Silph plummeted out of the sky, more falling than diving into Sam’s arms, his weakly fluttering wings barely breaking his fall.

Sam was terrified. The alien looked far more fragile than before, his previously eerily white skin now gray, his formerly sparkling eyes dulled.

Savreen came running up, and Sam curled his arms around Silph protectively, turning his back to her.

“Don’t be an idiot. If I harmed children, I wouldn’t be here. Come with me,” she ordered.

Sam followed out of desperation, expecting them to head for the Infirmary. He was confused when they turned in the opposite direction, and he was led to an enormous building that he had never entered before, which he had assumed was for gold storage, in preparation for shipments.

She used her palm to open the lock on the door and held it open for him. He entered the building and stopped, stunned. It was an indoor botanical garden. There were lights and fountains and color, everywhere. Plants with leaves in a rainbow of colors, flowers, even what looked like fruit and vegetables.

“This is our garden. We use it primarily for sanity, but we also grow fruit and vegetables here, to supplement out food supplies. That paste you’ve been eating is just the dregs of our emergency rations. We didn’t want Captain Nestral to see this. He would have immediately reported to the Emperor that we weren’t suffering enough,” Savreen stated, disdain clear in her voice.

“We have already prepared a living area for you and the Aos Sí in the back, roped off for privacy from those who will come here, though you may keep your bed and footlocker in the Barracks, if you prefer. You are both allowed free rein of this area, though we ask that you, Sam, stick to the walkways, so you do not harm the roots of the plants. He may fly freely and alight wherever he wishes,” she stated.

Relief and joy so intense it brought him to his knees exploded across Sam’s mind, and then Silph was gone, buzzing and darting everywhere.

“Did he injure you?” Savreen asked in concern, crouching by his side.

Sam shook his head, still stunned by the flood of emotion. “No. He just… Thank you. You saved his life,” Sam said with conviction. He didn’t know what to make of Kavreti, but Savreen’s calm presence was something he could trust, something to ground him.

“Good. We don’t want you damaged. Be sure to check in with the Infirmary before eating any of the fruit or vegetables here. Some of it might be poisonous to your species. The Aos Sí will know what is safe for him to eat, and it is the quintessence more than the food that he needs to survive,” she stated confidently.

Sam was concerned Silph might kill the plants if he stole too much of their life’s energy. There was a difference between an entire planet of life and a single building, no matter how large that building might be, but he wasn’t about to voice his concerns and potentially endanger Silph.

0 0 0

When Savreen burst into Kavreti’s office two days after _Profit’s Promise_ left, Kavreti dumped an entire steaming cup of jaruit on his desk, reaching for his pistol. All thought of scolding her fled, when he saw his all but unflappable Captain looked as deathly pale as the day they’d been forced to watch a planet die.

“Battle cruiser, in system,” she reported, her voice unaccustomedly hoarse.

There was only one reason a battle cruiser would be coming into their system. Apparently Emperor Zarkon needed to make some kind of further example of him and his crew. They wouldn’t be quietly fading into oblivion after all. But hopefully the Blade would be able to rescue everyone else.

“Sound the evacuation alarm. The new slaves haven’t been drilled yet, make sure the others bring them into the right tunnels. As we planned, we’ll make it hard enough to find them that they leave, once they’ve captured me and bombed the facility into dust,” he stated grimly, as he holstered his weapon and straightened his uniform jacket, walking past her, towards the door.

The sharp pain in his neck was met with his hand, as he spun, a look of incredulity and betrayal on his face, as he saw the syringe in her hand. He tried to reach out, but whatever the drug was, it was appallingly fast acting. His body had instantly become lead.

“Forgive me, _kushatheni_ , but you’ve given me the one order I could never follow. Marmora needs one of the last sons of their House far more than anyone needs me,” Savreen stated sadly, but somehow serenely, and then her lips touched his.

_She betrayed me, attacked me, ambushed me, drugged me, called me beloved in **Altaean** , she **knows** I’m of Marmora, she **kissed** me, she…_

0 0 0

“Sir, we’ve established communications with Tangier, Assistant Overseer Savreen,” Lieutenant Tireen reported.

“Assistant Overseer Savreen, this is Commander Thace of the Battle Cruiser _Dominator_. We are patrolling this area and the nearby systems for pirate activity. We came across evidence of an attack upon the cargo transport _Profit’s Promise_ which was scheduled to deliver supplies to your facility and have been unable to contact her. Did the ship make her scheduled drop?” Thace asked, hiding his anxiety with effort. Even had the ship arrived, the human he was seeking might already be dead.

“Yes and no, sir. The supply drop was expected a month ago. _Profit’s Promise_ arrived four days ago, with serious battle damage, and nearly half the vital cargo we were to have received was lost to pirates. The ship’s Captain, Nestral, reported that they destroyed the pirate ship that damaged them. They stayed for two days to treat their casualties and repair their ship, but their communications system and the bulk of their damage was beyond our ability to repair with the parts and facilities we have,” Assistant Overseer Savreen reported.

“Has there been any sign of additional pirate activity in the vicinity?” Thace asked.

“We wouldn’t know, sir. Our sensors are only capable of detecting ships already deep within the system. But yours is the only other ship we’ve seen in nearly two months,” she reported.

“Transmit a list of the supplies you didn’t receive. We’ll replace what we can from ship’s stores. And we’ll send some of our technicians to see what we can do about augmenting your communications system and detection system as well. We’ll be in orbit within half a krone,” Thace offered. He would, of course, go down to the facility to oversee the supply drop and equipment upgrades personally. Which would give him ample opportunity to speak to the human slave, if he yet lived, though he wouldn’t tell even Kavreti the reason for his interest.

0 0 0

Savreen began cursing loud and long, as soon as she ended her transmission. Apparently she wasn’t going to die today after all. She might only wish she was about to. Because she’d ambushed Kavreti, she’d even kissed the idiot Altaean, she’d been fully prepared to nobly sacrifice her life for her love, and instead, they were being brought supplies and equipment upgrades by another fool of a Blade who she’d happily bury her combat dagger hilt deep in, if given an opportunity.

Although Commander Thace must have been under orders by Galran command to come. What if this was a trap for him, as well as Kavreti? Or was she being paranoid? Should she cancel the evacuation order, convince everyone it was actually a drill, in spite of the earlier claim that it was not? _You have less than half a krone to get the facility back into order. Decide, now, and live with the consequences._

With a final curse she hit the all’s clear button, and when Drennan’s astonished voice came on the line, she interrupted him. “False alarm. Were getting high level visitors and a freaking supply drop, technicians and machinery, compliments of Commander Thace of the Battle Cruiser _Dominator_. Tell everyone it was a drill made to look like the real thing, calm them down, and get them back here on the double. And bring Kavreti to the Infirmary and have Doc Kashiin whip up some believable charts, a concussion, an illness compliments of our new slaves, anything to explain him being unconscious for the next eight krone. And while you’re at it, have him send something over for a migraine that won’t impair my cognition any more than it obviously already is,” she commanded.

“Yes, sir!” She didn’t think she’d ever heard Drennan sound so cowed, not since the day they watched Sidhe shatter.

“Crap, and make sure that Aos Sí kid stays out of sight. If they don’t know we have one, I don’t want to rub their faces in that kind of reminder of why we’re here. In fact, add him and the new guy, Sam, that alien he bonded with, to the accident report for Skreen. They’ve been sleeping in the garden and off doing that research for us and no one’s seen them for the past two days anyway. Let’s just change the report to say that all three of them are buried under a couple of tons of rock, as of two days ago,” she ordered, just to be on the safe side. Skreen had died the day he arrived, but that would have looked too suspicious, had anyone followed up on the report, so they reported it happening two days later, in a tunnel collapse. No one ever expected anyone to return from Tangier anyway, everyone knew it was a death sentence.

0 0 0

Thace stared at the report in dismay. Two days. The Terran slave he had been seeking had been killed a mere two days ago, in a tunnel collapse. Thace was both suspicious and hopeful at first: Kavreti was obsessively protective of his people. But there was no indication that the slaves had instead been slated for transport offworld, and Kavreti’s crew and the other guards as well as the slaves were all being pushed to their limits, in desperation, trying to eke more gold out of barren rock. Desperation often bred carelessness and mistakes.

Kavreti himself had been injured only earlier that day. Fortunately, though unconscious, he appeared to be in no danger, and was expected to make a full recovery. At least his fellow Blade had benefited from his visit. They had more of the supplies and machinery they needed to survive, and apparently, just before his death, the Terran, Sam Holt, had discovered the silver that should be able to keep them alive for a while longer.

The Blade would have smuggled Kavreti and the others who had fallen out of the Empire’s graces offworld long ago, if it weren’t for the twisted sense of humor the universe sometimes seemed to foster. For the past five decades, the Blade had sought access to Tangier, but hadn’t been able to risk it, due to the Galra presence there, the active mine. And then quite by accident, one of their top operatives had been disgraced and sentenced there to rot, as the facility’s commander, no less. It had been the perfect cover to conduct their search, thoroughly and in secret.

So far there had been no sign of the Red Lion, in spite of the promising clue they had unearthed leading them to this denuded, once thriving world. The thought that he might truly be hidden here, that he might finally be uncovered, after 10,000 years of being lost…

His communicator bleeped and he answered it. “Commander Thace.”

“Sir, we’ve received new orders. We’re to proceed to Kendaluo, immediately after dropping you back on the _Obliterator_ ,” the Captain reported.

Thace cursed silently. Apparently he wouldn’t even have the opportunity to speak to Kavreti before heading back to his post.

“On my way,” he replied, heading for the shuttle, as the others who had offloaded the replacement supplies began veering toward it as well. At least the trip wasn’t a total waste, a risk with no reward. The mine now had a functioning communication and early warning system, their food stores were replenished, and they’d dropped off some sensors that should aid Kavreti’s search for the Red Lion, as well as aid their mining efforts. If only all their missions ended half as favorably.


	9. Volatile Mix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing from my readers! I always respond to Comments personally, often with story tidbits and sometimes even sneak peeks. Please leave Kudos and Comments if you’re enjoying the story, and thanks again to those of you who have! 
> 
> This chapter is about Lotor and Matt. Here’s some of what’s coming after it:
> 
> Chapter 10 – Teach Me (Lotor and Matt)  
> Chapter 11 – A Helping Hand (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and “spoiler”)  
> Chapter 12 – Intervention (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and Thace)  
> Chapter 13 – Oath of Allegiance, Blood of Betrayal (Lotor and Thace)

Matt was losing his mind.

He’d never been bored before in his life: it wasn’t in his nature to be. Long before he finished a project, there were always a dozen more clamoring for his attention, at least six of which were in various stages of progress before he’d ever completed the first. His mind worked best when he had multiple problems at once he was working on. The solution to one often led unexpectedly to a breakthrough in another completely unrelated project. It used to drive his professors nuts, the way he thought. He never went from A to B to C, in logical, rational steps, but from A to Q back to D and then straight to Z. Even on the trip to Kerberos, in the tiny, cramped ship, he’d had multiple experiments he was running while on the voyage, before ever reaching the moon. But then he’d been captured. He’d become a slave. Theoretically, at least.

Because weren’t slaves supposed to work? Wasn’t that the whole point of keeping slaves? To do the menial labor you hated? But Lotor wouldn’t let him work. He gave him a datapad so he could take notes, and showed him how to use it. Fortunately it had a freehand stylus function for drawing, since he had no clue what any of the letters on the keypad were. Then Lotor taught him all about the fruits and vegetables they were eating, but never allowed him to prepare a meal for them. Lotor produced an actual tool kit, but didn’t have anything for him to repair and wouldn’t permit him to take apart his room again. He showed him the contents of the basic emergency medical kit, patiently going over every drug and object inside, providing the details of when and how to use them for a myriad of illnesses and injuries, but wouldn’t let him practice with it.

He spent his days making notes on the datapad, about Galran technology at first, and then about Lotor and what little he knew of the Galra, and finally, about his capture and captivity. He had no idea what Lotor did with his days. He’d leave at seemingly random times in the morning and return at different times in the evening.

During the second and third week as Lotor’s servant, his master showed him his other medical kits: the one for burns from fire, the one for chemical burns, the surgical kit for severe physical trauma, and even the kit containing poison antidotes, after Lotor had Matt teach him in detail about his biology. They spent two days on each of the first three kits, but an entire week on the antitoxins. There was clearly a lot to learn, a lot to remember, about symptoms, because unlike the other injuries or illnesses, symptoms weren’t always distinct when someone was poisoned, and therefore it apparently often wasn’t clear what toxin had been used.

At least during the journaling and lessons Matt had been kept busy and his mind had been challenged. But he’d written down everything he could think of, and now Lotor was apparently at a loss regarding what to do with him.

“If you don’t need me, you could let me go,” Matt suggested the final night of the third week. Galran weeks were eight days, and their days seemed to be at least 24 hours long. It had been 24 days since he last saw Shiro. Somewhere between 28 and 32 days since he’d last seen his father, the day they were captured, the day this nightmare had started, and he was feeling particularly desperate, because that was an entire Earth month, and pretty soon it would be two, and then six months, then a full year, and another, and another, and he’d never go home again, he’d grow old and die here, but he wouldn’t even know or care, because he’d literally be out of his mind with boredom by then!

“You would not survive, outside my protection,” Lotor stated confidently.

Which only made him worry more about his dad, about Shiro. Had Shiro been fighting all that time, in that arena? Or had he died that first fight, that first night? Was his father dead too?

“You could protect me in your laboratory instead of here. So you could experiment and I could watch, because I know you don’t want me touching anything because you think I’m an idiot, just some dumb animal. That’s all I am, isn’t it? Some kind of useless curiosity, a well-behaved pet,” Matt snapped.

A curious expression passed Lotor’s face, something like a grimace. “Whatever gave you the misguided notion you were well-behaved?”

Matt started to fume, because he wasn’t even denying he was a pet, he… smiling. That weird grimace was actually a smile. Savage, feral, but a smile. He was joking again, teasing him. Just like that, his petulant, confrontational mood vanished.

“I need to work. I’ve worked my whole life. I can’t just sit here forever. I understand you’re trying to protect me, though I’m not sure from what or who. Probably other people who wouldn’t be nearly as nice to a slave as you’ve been,” Matt began.

Lotor blinked. “Nice? Did you actually just call me nice, or is the translator malfunctioning?” Lotor asked, sounding thunderstruck.

“I wouldn’t know. Because no one’s taught me Galran yet. If I’m going to be stuck here the rest of my life, don’t you think I should at least learn the language?” he snapped. “At least that would keep me busy for a little while. But I’m a chemist. I belong in a lab, oh I don’t know, maybe actually using some fucking chemicals!”

He realized he was shouting at about the same time that he realized he didn’t give a damn. His patience hadn’t just worn thin, it had worn away to nothing days ago. He was bored out of his mind, and hating himself for it, because Shiro was probably having to fight every day, multiple times, if he was still alive, and his father was who knew where doing who knew what and he just wanted to get off this fucking spaceship and see his family again and get back to his life!

“Are you honestly actually _screaming_ at me? Do you have a death wish? Did it somehow escape your notice during all my myriad lessons that you are a lowly slave, that your next breath is at my mercy, and I’m the son of the being who rules the entire quiznaking universe?” Lotor demanded, the volume of his own voice showing that Matt clearly wasn’t the only one who was at his wits end with the current arrangement.

“I know that! I know you think I’m a joke, or a toy. You saved my life on a whim but you don’t have a clue what to do with me. I’ve been bending over backwards trying to show you I can be useful, but you don’t care. You don’t want me to do anything for you. You don’t even want me here and I don’t want to be here, so **LET ME GO**!” Matt yelled.

Lotor’s eyes narrowed. “There is only one escape for slaves: death. That friend you told me about? The one you said was like a brother to you? Shiro? He understands that, just as well as my siblings once did. He cared for you so greatly he mortally wounded you with a sword so he could enter the arena before you. He killed his first opponent that night, without hesitation and with the same gentle mercy he dealt to you. He killed a Champion who had reigned in the arena for nearly a year. And he’s killed a new opponent, sometimes two, or even three, every night since. Over three dozen of them, at current count. He is cunning and ruthless and deadly. My fellow soldiers haven’t been so entertained for months. Should I send you once again to his tender mercies?

“Or perhaps you’d like to be sent to a mining facility instead? We have hundreds of thousands of them, spread across the universe. But maybe you’d like to go to a particular one: Tangier. It used to be a gold mine, before the final vein petered out. Now I hear it’s become a thriving silver mine. You appear to have some bizarre filial bond with the man who sired you. You should be proud. It’s likely your father had something to do with that, considering he was a xenogeologist and their new discoveries align so well with his arrival at that facility.

“Perhaps you think he might be rewarded for that, that he might have achieved some higher status? That he might help you in your own terrible plight, of being forced to serve the Crown Prince of Galra on the flagship of her armada? What a pity that he died in a tunnel collapse, buried under hundreds of tons of rock. I just received the report tonight in response to my research and inquiries, and had been wondering how to break it to you gently. I suppose I should commend you for making that unnecessary. Here. Read if for yourself,” he snapped, flinging his own personal datapad at Matt, who stood there numbly and let it fall to the floor.

“Oh, that’s right. You can’t read Galran yet. Because I’m such a cruel and heartless master that I’ve instead been teaching you the first aid skills you will need to survive after I flog you within an inch of your life for being the disobedient, disrespectful, rebellious cur you are. It’s not as if I’m an Acolyte of an order that instead teaches the preservation of life at all costs or anything, is it?” Lotor finished sarcastically.

Matt barely heard him and was having trouble processing anything after the words “died in a tunnel collapse”. He was staring down at the datapad, knowing he’d never be able to read it, but with a shaking hand, he crouched and reached down to pick it up anyway, but somehow he forgot to stand and end up sitting abruptly on the floor. He lifted the datapad and looked, but the alien words were blurring before his eyes. He distantly realized that he was crying, when little splashes of water started dripping and pooling onto the screen.

_Dad is… he’s… I’m sorry, Mom. I should have tried to find him faster. Katie. How am I going to tell Katie? Only I’m not, am I? I just turned my only friend here against me. You stupid, selfish, thoughtless idiot! After everything he’s done to help you. He found out what happened to Shiro and Dad for you, maybe he’d even planned to reunite us. He was trying to protect you, again, tonight. But you had to push him, didn’t you? The way you used to push Dustin and his idiot friends. If it wasn’t for Shiro and Keith… Shiro. Did you really kill people? You’re still killing them? How can…? You’re the most gentle, honorable man I know._

_You… that first one. That first night. That was to protect me. You deliberately injured me and then fought him so I wouldn’t have to. You killed him so he wouldn’t kill me. It doesn’t sound like Lotor realizes that, I should explain you’re not… But now… You won’t ever be able to forgive yourself for killing them, will you? But you’ll keep doing it, to survive, until you find me and save me. Until you find us both. But you won’t, because Dad… There won’t even be a body, not if he was crushed, not if it’s still buried. He’s never going back to Earth. None of us are._

Lotor was mumbling something, he wasn’t sure what, he’d either somehow shut down the room’s translator capabilities, he was speaking a language the translator didn’t know, or Matt just wasn’t processing the words. He tried focusing on them, to give him something else, anything else, to think about.

The moment he looked up at Lotor, Lotor’s eyes snapped to his, as if he sensed his eyes on him. Matt recognized regret, remorse and guilt in his stormy gaze, frustration in every tense line of his body.

Matt took a deep shuddering breath. “Forgive me for being disrespectful.”

“Forgive me for telling you in such a manner,” Lotor simultaneously stated.

The two of them stared at one another.

“I warned you on the day we first met that you would be able to identify my anger, were I ever to lose my temper. Yet still, I have not lost control to this degree in a very long time. I don’t have the luxury of doing so. At least it was here, in front of a single witness. In front of you,” Lotor stated wryly, as if that was the best case scenario for such a loss of control.

“I guess I should have warned you about my temper, too,” Matt admitted, forcing himself to keep talking, when all he wanted to do was curl into a grieving ball and cry for the rest of his life. But he had to repair the damage he’d caused to their relationship, whatever that relationship might be. It didn’t feel like they were a master and servant. Lotor allowed him to speak far too freely, and didn’t speak to him like he was an inferior. He had started thinking of Lotor as a friend, before now. Only, he still was. He’d apologized for hurting him. As the Crown Prince, he probably hadn’t had to apologize to anyone before in his life, except maybe to his father and mother. But he seemed more humble and self-effacing than arrogant and entitled. Actually, it looked like Lotor had fought and scrabbled for whatever status he had.

“I’m not used to being in close confines with anyone for an extended period of time. It can be… stressful. Though to date, the benefits have, I think, outweighed the disadvantages,” Lotor admitted.

Lotor seemed to be as concerned as he was to salvage and repair their torn relationship.

“It’s not that I’m not grateful for everything you’ve been teaching me. I am, believe me I am. It’s just… I’m not sure what you… I realize you… I know it wasn’t just a whim, you rescuing me, but I think it was an impulse, a reaction, that you did it without weighing all the consequences, because there wasn’t time, I’ve done things like that before too, sometimes even knowing I’ll regret it in certain ways, but doing it anyway, because it’s right, or necessary, or…

“But I’ve been studying you too, while you study me, and I’ve seen how deliberately you act and react, I can tell you’re thinking of a thousand different things, even when you react instantly, and… I can’t imagine what kind of life you’ve had, to make that necessary, but I think I realize a little of it, from what you’ve said. I just… I’d like to give something back to you. Help you in some way.

“I mean, I think my being here maybe has actually helped a little? Because you’ve seemed to be a little less… a little more at ease with me and… I think maybe that’s been worrying you, because you probably feel like it’s bad to let your guard down around me even just a little, that you shouldn’t around anyone, because obviously you’ve built so many walls to keep yourself safe, but walls are breached and buckled and climbed over all the time. And sometimes they just collapse under their own weight. And walls don’t just keep people out, they keep you trapped inside, alone, too.

“And no matter how strong and capable you are, sometimes you’re going to need help. Everyone does. There’s an expression where I’m from, ‘No man is an island’. It’s impossible to survive all on your own. But those connections, those bonds, don’t have to be weaknesses. They can be strengths. If you let them. So you know, maybe teaching those people written and spoken Galran might be a good thing,” he urged, with a pained smile.

Lotor had been watching him and listening intently. Now he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“I understand you want to help me. It is in your nature to try to befriend me. But you should not want me as a friend. I have endangered you merely by bringing you here. My enemies will strike at any perceived weakness. A servant can be a target. A friend would be a far more valuable one. A friend can become a hostage, a weapon against me. Slaves and servants are nearly valueless, interchangeable and disposable, to most. Friends too, for many, easily discarded, betrayed and replaced. But not to me,” Lotor stated.

Matt nodded. “I just realized, until you lost your temper, you never once called me your slave, you’ve always called me your servant. You differentiate between them, don’t you?”

Lotor inhaled and exhaled deliberately again.

“I do not condone slavery. I do not keep slaves. Every life has value. No one should be able to own someone else, to determine whether they live or die, whether they bear children or not, should be able to take their lives or families from them, determine where they live, what they do. I cannot free you, because it is not currently in my power to free anyone. But a servant is in service to another. And there is a Life Debt between us. We are bonded together by it, until one of us chooses to end that bond. But your options are strictly limited at the moment and as the damage has already been done by my original action, it is neither to my benefit nor detriment for you to remain in my service,” Lotor claimed.

“Except the closer we become, the stronger a weapon I could be against you, and I’m pretty sure you like me, because you apologized to me, and you’ve been telling me things I don’t think you’ve ever said to anyone. So I need to be especially careful your enemies can’t use me against you. It would help if I knew who your enemies are,” Matt risked prodding.

“The entire rest of the Galra Empire,” Lotor stated, looking him in the eye, without a hint of amusement.

“Oh.” He hadn’t been sure what Lotor would say, but he hadn’t expected that.

“That being the case, I know you agree that my lone ally should become fluent in both written and spoken Galran as soon as possible. So ready your datapad for your first lesson. I’ve never taught anyone else a language, but I have taught myself close to a dozen of them, and you have an agile mind, and I have some experience with how you think and learn, so I should be a competent teacher.”

“You’re teaching me…? Thank you!” Matt eagerly snatched up his datapad. “But won’t your translator technology just translate what you’re saying? How will I hear it in Galran?”

Lotor’s lips quirked in amusement as he walked over to the comm panel and waived him over to it. “You need to adjust the translator to Instructor mode. The AI will be able to recognize what not to translate by the vocal cues.”

“How does this system even work? It’s like magic! Is it? Actually magic?” Matt asked intrigued.

“No. You can read all about how this technology works, in the technical manuals about it, after you learn to read Galran,” Lotor teased with a quirk of his lips.

Matt had already been eager to learn Galran, but as incentives went, it was definitely an effective one.

For the next few blissful hours Matt almost even managed to forget about his father, and Shiro. But once he was lying in his bed, the tears and memories came flooding back.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I couldn’t save you. But I’m going to find Shiro, and save him,” he promised, in the darkness of his cabin.

0 0 0

Lotor sat watching and listening to Mattholt cry himself to sleep. He’d only seen such depth of grief before in slaves. Even Galran soldiers who lost their friends and brothers in battle did not mourn. Why should they, when it was every soldier’s dream to die gloriously in battle in service to the Empire?

He frowned at his servant’s final utterance, before succumbing to sleep. Why Mattholt should want to save the man who had nearly killed him was beyond his understanding. But it did not matter. Shiro was beyond saving, not merely because he was no longer the man Mattholt had known, but because he had attracted his mother’s eye, the day he defeated the Champion. Shiro was destined for her laboratory, as Mattholt’s father likely would have been, had he not had the fortune of dying a quick and relatively painless death. The knowledge that she would want Mattholt as soon as she discovered his existence, as another test subject, to compare data to, was why he would be sitting here, awake, long after Mattholt slept.


	10. Teach Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Caution - drug and syringe use triggers.
> 
> A reminder that "kushatheni" is the Altaean word for beloved, as revealed in Chapter 8, when Savreen called Kavreti that.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has left Kudos! Special thanks for all the wonderful Comments from Whitewinterstar, Amoxli, Iggy_McBabyface, and ColdToTheBone. And extra special handsprings thanks to the fantastically detailed, insightful and amazing Comments from Greyisles and sarehptar. I hope you’ve been reading my responses to them, too. ;)  Your Kudos and Comments mean the world to me!
> 
> Future chapters:  
> Chapter 11 – A Helping Hand (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and “spoiler”)  
> Chapter 12 – Intervention (Lotor, Matt, Haggar and Thace)  
> Chapter 13 – Oath of Allegiance, Blood of Betrayal (Lotor and Thace)  
> Chapter 14 – Forgive Me (Lotor and Matt)

 

Mattholt looked unaccountably uncomfortable, as Lotor asked a simple question in Galran, “What is your name?” and awaited his servant’s response. It was a few weeks after their language lessons had begun, and Mattholt hadn’t seemed vexed by any of the other simple conversational Galran Lotor had been teaching him, in addition to the plethora of vocabulary.

“Um, about that. My name isn’t Mattholt. My first name is actually Matt. Well Matthew. Matt is a short form of that, a nickname, but Holt is my surname, my family name, what you call a House name. So if you could call me Matt from now on instead, I’d prefer that.”

Lotor looked askance at him. “I told you weeks ago to call me Highness, instead of Master, yet you waited seven weeks to tell me your correct name?”

“Um, yes? But it’s not like I understood the power and importance of names before you explained it to me, or that I knew my name was part of the Life Debt, or that you can use names in magic,” his servant apologized.

Lotor’s eyes widened. “That is actually unexpectedly brilliant. Not that I would not expect brilliance of you, but that you did not intend… We can use this to our advantage. I will continue to call you Mattholt, and think of you that way, as you, subconsciously, have begun to think of yourself by that name whenever you are in my presence. You must never speak your full name to anyone else, your House name. If any soldier asks, or the Druids seize you and interrogate you, you will tell them your name is Matthew Holt. But you and I both know it is Mattholt. I can ward you with that name, cast protective spells to preserve your mind, even your body. Our lessons are done for the day. I must begin work immediately, modifying those I cast weeks ago.” He stood abruptly.

“Wait. My full name is Matthew Evan Holt. We have a middle name too, though I always hated mine, so I never use it,” Mattholt volunteered.

“Even better. When they try to rip your name from your mind, they will hear all of it, but when they try to use it against you, your very nature will rebel against the portion that is Evan. Your bizarre customs regarding names might well save your life or sanity,” Lotor claimed eagerly.

0 0 0

What Lotor was saying about the danger to him was chilling, terrifying. “Teach me! Not now, but later, about the Galra, about the Druids. The more I know the better prepared I’ll be for whatever happens,” Matt urged, desperate to understand all he could.

Lotor froze in the act of heading to the door to the outside corridor. He turned back, his face somber now, grim and determined, instead of excited. “I will teach you, about Galran culture, politics and history, about Ashwan, the true Druidic philosophy and teachings that shaped me, and the corruption the others follow. And I will teach you our science, as well. Our biology and physiology, our chemistry and physics, even our alchemy. If I knew anything of our technology and engineering I would teach it to you as well, but magic and technology never mix without forming chaos, without accelerating entropy, and I will never pay that price. I would die before I ever pay it.”

Matt swallowed and nodded, because he wasn’t exactly certain what Lotor meant, but he knew it must be about the corruption of the other Druids. And until now, Lotor had been reluctant to share anything about his own biology or physiology. He realized that Lotor must have gradually been learning to trust him all these weeks, and now he was unexpectedly willing to bury him in an avalanche of knowledge.

The mental analogy unexpectedly and painfully reminded Matt of his father’s death. But maybe if Lotor was able to trust him enough to reveal all that now, he might be willing to hear about Shiro, and help him somehow. He’d speak to Lotor about it when his mind wasn’t elsewhere.

“Continue to review your language lessons. And contact me through my personal comm if you need me, on the handheld one I gave you, but only if it is an emergency,” Lotor ordered.

“Yes, Highness,” Matt agreed just as seriously.

Matt felt bereft and alone as soon as the door closed. It was becoming harder and harder to watch Lotor leave every day, and not because his entire world had shrunk to revolve around a few rooms, a single person. It wasn’t that he relied on Lotor for his food, conversation, sanity, everything. It was more than that. At least he thought it was. He didn’t think it was some sort of Stockholm syndrome fixation on his captor. Lotor was his friend. He was amazing. Every time Matt brought warmth to his face, or gentle teasing to his voice, or those tiny little almost-smiles to his lips, he felt so _happy_. It made him smile too.

He’d been thinking about Earth and his family less and less, adapting to his life here. But it was more than that. The times he did think or dream about home, Lotor was there. He was part of it. He was sitting at the table with them eating dinner, scheming with Katie, and laughing at Dad’s stupid jokes, and…

But in those daydreams, Dad was there too. And Dad wouldn’t ever be there again. Dad was dead. Lotor’s people had captured him, and caused his death. But Lotor hadn’t done that. Lotor was different, he… Lotor was everything.

“Jeznat. I’m so quiznaked,” Matt admitted, sinking onto his chair. He forced his panic down and picked up his datapad. He’d have the rest of his life to panic about what a vital part of his life Lotor had become. Right now, he needed to learn more Galran.

0 0 0

For the first time in his life, Lotor entered his personal laboratory eagerly instead of reluctantly, with renewed purpose. He carefully checked the dozens of protective wards for any sign of trespass into his domain. His laboratory was far different in appearance than his mother’s. There were no terrified, mutilated, screaming “specimens”, no twisted technology created to mimic and replace limbs and eyes and tongues. Just the thought made his stomach churn.

The only blood here was Mattholt’s, carefully taken in minute quantities while he slept over the past two months, with a gentle touch of magic to ensure he wouldn’t wake as it was extracted. He’d needed it to create the protection wards around him, and doubted Mattholt would have given it willingly, at least, at first. Now, he doubted Mattholt would deny him anything. The thought was more humbling and terrifying than exhilarating, as was the corollary. He was fully prepared to give his life to protect Mattholt. In theory, he had been from his first action, from saving him and making it appear the Druids had taken him. In reality, he’d acted on impulse, because there was no time to make a rational choice.

But there was a line he had not crossed before, a step he had not taken, one he knew Mattholt would never approve of, were he to realize the significance of it, that he was now ready to bear the weight of. He released the multitude of protection wards concealing the quintessence vault, until it was revealed, and then the dozen wards locking it. With each ward removed, the power within the vault beckoned stronger.

He opened it and extracted a single phial, then hesitantly, a second. Never before had he used more than a single container. The temptation and risk were too great. In all his 24 years he had used a total of only 27 before this, but he had need of two phials this time, to ensure the potency of the magicks he was about to invoke and impart, to bind to Mattholt’s blood.

He had collected the quintessence within each phial by hand, drained it from the living animals he had captured for that purpose, on a dozen different worlds. He would not call it harvesting, the way the others did. They were not plants. None of them had been intelligent, beyond the intelligence of animals, but they were sentient beings, they were able to perceive the world they lived in. They had families, they had felt joy and fear, they had felt pain. It did not ease his guilt to know that he gave them neither pain nor fear, that their deaths had been quick and what some might call merciful. There was no mercy in killing a healthy animal for your own benefit. But sometimes antitoxins weren’t enough. And someday the augmented power the life of those creatures provided might save the lives of many more. The knowledge that even Ashwan himself would have condoned his actions still did not forgive them.

But he had already decided upon his course of action. Additional rumination and guilt would cloud his mind and weaken the magic, and he needed it to be at its most potent. Mattholt’s life would one day depend upon it. That single fact justified the risk. With determination, he held the first syringe to his throat and depressed the plunger.

The effect was immediate, as the stolen life’s energy coursed through him. Colors instantly became more vivid, sounds more intense, as his awareness and perception of the world around him sharpened and amplified, and he could feel his power strengthen. It was exquisite and seductive, entrancing, captivating. It would be so terrifyingly easy to surrender to the enticement of it, as both his father and mother had. But he was not them. He would rather die than become a slave to it, as they had.

He would use the second phial only once the effects of the first had diminished to the point that his magicks were no longer augmented. He had carefully calculated the point at which he would need it in advance, because once under the influence of the quintessence, it would be far too dangerous to trust his judgment regarding its use.

0 0 0

Lotor had made a point of avoiding the Arena, the gladiatorial combat that he refused to call “games”, whenever possible. After his father had reprimanded him for missing the match where the mysterious new Champion had triumphed over Myzax, he had made a point of putting in more frequent appearances. Once he learned that the new Champion was Shiro, Mattholt’s friend, and further learned that he was the one who had nearly killed the servant who had become so important to him, he had become much more interested in watching Shiro fight, to see the actions of a man who would commit the most base and self-serving betrayal of such a loyal and worthy friend.

He would have expected the matches to be brutal and showy, the way Myzax’s had been, for Shiro to taunt and torture his opponents, allowing them to think survival, if not victory was within their grasp over and over again before obliterating them. But Shiro did not fight that way. He was efficient and deadly, ending each match quickly, ignoring the audience entirely, instead of playing to them. Lotor expected him to appear emotionless, or perhaps grim and determined, but his eyes were instead haunted, and there was desperation and self-revulsion in every line of his face.

A more deluded follower of Ashwan might have spoken on Shiro’s behalf, and argued that he killed from necessity, for his own survival, and so his actions were justified. But he did so for no greater purpose, only to live for another day, another death. This man who had betrayed and nearly killed a loyal friend clearly did not deserve to live at the cost of others.

Mattholt had tried to speak to him about Shiro’s circumstances more than once, but he refused to allow it. Mattholt had proven he was loyal to a fault, by befriending him, but even he was more worthy of that misguided affection than someone like Shiro would ever be. It was incredibly frustrating that just when Lotor thought Mattholt had learned better than to speak of Shiro, he’d try again. His loyalty was admirable, even if it was misplaced.

0 0 0

As the weeks passed, Matt learned everything he could about the Galran Empire, their people, politics, language, culture, religion, all of it. But he never forgot his purpose. He needed to free Shiro and return to Earth. He’d finally accepted that he wouldn’t be able to bring his father home, or even his body, but his mom and Katie needed the two of them, at least, to come home. It was incredibly frustrating that Lotor wouldn’t ever let him say anything about Shiro. He’d known Lotor for nearly three months now, yet he still shut him down every time he tried to talk about Shiro.

Lotor had denied him nothing else, except his freedom, and he now knew it truly wasn’t in Lotor’s power to give him that. Every world in the known universe was under Galra’s control. Lotor had assured him Earth was not yet, but that was only because his mother had designs upon it, and did not want it harvested or mined or subjugated. There was nowhere Matt could hide, except perhaps amongst the pirates and other criminal elements that worked in the fringes of the Empire, where her might was spread more thinly. As it was, many of the troops on each of their ships were drones, robots, not actual biological Galra.

But Lotor shared his incredible knowledge freely. Lotor was clearly brilliant, a genius, as he was, though Lotor’s mind worked far differently than his own. It was organized, analytical, even compartmentalized, with his emotions kept carefully reined and restrained, for the most part, though he had begun to show more and more of his true nature to him. Most precious of all, after all the more basic lessons were done, Lotor had finally allowed Matt to leave his quarters and accompany him to his laboratory.

When Lotor had provided the Initiate’s robes for him to wear, Matt had thought he was out of his mind, and balked at even touching them. “Are you insane? I can’t wear an Initiate’s robes. I’m not a follower of Ashwan.”

“What is the true First Tenet?” Lotor asked.

“All life is sacred,” Matt replied automatically.

Lotor proceeded to ask about each of the tenets, and then had him recite all the daily prayers, for meals, for bathing, for walking, until Matt rolled his eyes. “Alright, sure, I know a lot about Ashwan. But I’m still not a follower.”

“Do you truly believe that all life is sacred? Would you risk your own life to save another? Would you ever think to harm another were it not in defense of your own life, or another life?” Lotor pressed.

“Yes, I believe life is sacred, and of course I’d try to save someone in danger,” Matt snapped, frustrated.

“Then you are a follower of Ashwan, whether or not you realize. ‘The truth is the truth, whether or not we choose to accept it.’ As an Acolyte, it is my duty and my privilege to instruct others in the True Teachings. You are my first disciple, my first Initiate. Welcome to the True Path,” Lotor stated, holding out the gray robes again, the spark of challenge in his eyes and a twist of a smile on his lips.

“If your God or his Prophet strike me down with lightning, it’s your fault,” Matt muttered, as he reluctantly took the robes from him.

“It is neither God’s nor Ashwan’s retribution you should fear, but those who claim to be in their service. Once we leave these quarters, you will follow me silently. There is an extremely powerful  ward of protection on those robes. You will not be seen or heard, if you do nothing to draw attention to yourself. In my shadow, you will pass unnoticed. My laboratory is four corridors away. If we see another Druid, **do not speak**. I may not be fully fledged within the Order, officially, but my power is second only to that of one other.”

 _To his mother’s?_ He wasn’t about to ask. _And what if we meet her?_ He wouldn’t ask that either, because he wasn’t sure Lotor had a plan.

“Never mind. I don’t need to see your laboratory that badly,” Matt stated firmly, pushing the robes back to him.

Lotor shook his head and pushed the robes back. “Actually, you do. I’m going to teach you alchemy. If you can master it, you’ll have some hope of surviving against the Order, even without my aid,” he argued.

Matt swallowed. He knew Lotor. The only way he wouldn’t provide his aid was if he was no longer there to give it. “I’ll be quiet and walk in your shadow,” he promised. “And I’ll master alchemy so someday I can help protect you, instead of endangering you.”

“I would be in danger with or without you. I would rather be with you,” Lotor stated solemnly, his eyes meeting Matt’s with an intensity that took his breath away.

Matt’s eyes widened and he felt his face flush with heat. “I want to be with you, too,” he all but squeaked in response, and then began pulling the robe over his head, grateful for it covering his face, because he could feel himself blushing, and he didn’t want to see Lotor’s reaction.

When he was dressed in the robes with the hood up, and Lotor had properly adjusted it, they left the quarters that had been his home for nearly three months. Matt would have thought he’d feel relief or elation, but he was too afraid of being confronted by a soldier or Druid to feel anything but terror. He almost jumped out of his skin when two soldiers turned the corner and appeared in front of them, until he realized they were robots, and they were ignoring them, other than purposefully stepping further to the left, so they would not inhibit their progress. He didn’t gape at them as he otherwise might have, careful not to do anything that would draw attention.

He was shaking like a leaf by the time they reached a nondescript door. Lotor made some graceful gestures with both hands and spoke softly in that other language he’d heard a few times now, which Lotor had told him was ancient Altaean, a dead language from a long dead Kingdom, one that had perished ten millennia ago, along with all but a few dozens of her people who were loyal to the Galran Empire, the House Marmora. Only a handful of their descendants remained, and a few others within the Druid order who were not of that House.

The door opened and Matt followed Lotor inside. He had not realized how tense Lotor was, until he saw that tension release after the door was closed and locked behind them.

“May this be the only such laboratory you ever see,” Lotor said softly, in Galran, with feeling, uttering it like a blessing.

Matt realized to his shock that he’d actually heard and understood the Galran, that the words weren’t magically translated in his head; instead he had been the one translating them into English. _Of course. Magic and technology don’t mix without disaster. The translator technology is probably too volatile to be in use here._

“If the laboratory is within the flagship, why doesn’t the magic react badly to the ship?” Matt asked in Galran, fascinated.

“The balance is kept through a very complex array of spells which forms a barrier between the two,” Lotor replied, and then he proceeded to show him all the wonders around them.

Matt was entranced, completely captivated. It was different than any laboratory he’d ever been in, but also painfully similar. For the first time since leaving his ship, he felt like he was truly at home in his own skin, in his element, where he belonged, though the passion with which Lotor spoke, the animation that lit his normally guarded face, likely had a lot to do with it. It was clear Lotor loved his alchemy as much as Matt loved xenobiology and organic chemistry. And if he was understanding what Lotor was explaining, the three were actually not only similar, but inter-related, in a way he’d never perceived before.

When Lotor told him it was time to leave, because he needed his dinner, Matt argued against it, until he realized that his stomach was growling so loudly it was almost terrifying. They must have spent hours in the lab, but the time had flown past. “Can we come back after dinner? Please let me come back,” he begged.

“We can return tomorrow, kushatheni. You need your rest, as well as food. I won’t have you getting ill,” Lotor gently chided, caressing his cheek with his fingertips.

Matt felt that same flush of heat as before, but this time, it was a raging inferno. He nodded wordlessly in acquiescence, not trusting himself to speak.

And to his astonishment he saw Lotor’s eyes widen, and he lifted and looked at his hand as if he’d never seen it before, even as his face darkened to a far deeper purple than Matt had ever seen before.

Matt was eager to return to their quarters now, because he had to look up kushatheni on his datapad, because it was likely some form of Galran endearment, and Lotor probably wouldn’t tell him what it meant if he asked.

“You need to focus, to walk in my shadow, to be quiet, as before. Do not let your hunger or tiredness or… anything else… be a distraction,” Lotor cautioned firmly.

“Yes, Highness,” Matt replied, meeting his eyes so he’d know he truly understood and wasn’t just agreeing by rote.

Lotor studied him intently and then nodded, apparently satisfied with what he saw, or perhaps didn’t see.

They left as carefully as they entered, with spoken prayers, or phrases of power, and then headed back to their quarters. Thankfully this time they didn’t even encounter any robots. When they were safely back in their quarters, Matt doffed his robes, as did Lotor, and they each headed to their respective rooms. But Matt found himself hesitating at the doorway to his own room, wondering what lay beyond the doorway to Lotor’s. Would it be as Spartan as the rest of the quarters, or since it was his private space, would it be secretly hedonistic, with bright colors and cushions everywhere, like a Sultan’s den, with an enormous, plush bed where-? _Get your mind out of the gutter, Matthew Evan Holt, and keep it out of Lotor’s bed._

He darted into his room as he felt his face flame. Maybe he’d take a cold shower before he helped Lotor prepare dinner.


	11. A Helping Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Caution - drug and syringe use triggers, blood and violence.

Matt tried not to worry. Yes, Lotor hadn’t come home for dinner, and yes, they usually ate together, but there were times Lotor ate with his father, or with other officers, or worked late, or whatever kept him away, but he hadn’t done that in seven weeks, not since they’d started spending every night in Lotor’s laboratory together.

He’d learned so much in that time, not only more of the language, the people, the culture, their sciences, especially alchemy, but more about Lotor as well. Every day they grew closer and closer. It was becoming impossible to imagine he’d ever had a life without Lotor in it, a life different than this one. Often his dad and mom, Katie and Shiro seemed like a distant dream. But then he’d see something or make some new discovery and want to share it with them, and remember, and feel the pain and horror of their capture, of his dad’s death anew.

Lotor was always at his most sympathetic and gentlest at those times. Though Matt knew Lotor didn’t understand why he loved and missed his family, he acknowledged and accepted it. His feelings for his dad, mom and Katie, at least. Lotor didn’t want to ever even hear a single word about Shiro.

_Where **is** Lotor? He hasn’t called me on his personal comm, so he’s probably fine. Ashwan watch over him, he hasn’t called me, why hasn’t he called me? He’s alright, isn’t he?_

The door opened and Matt almost jumped out of his skin, tensing for anything, for armed guards, or Druids, or robot soldiers, or Emperor Zarkon, the one who’d personally sentenced them when Shiro had been begging for mercy. Matt almost fell to his knees when he saw it was Lotor.

“Where in Keserana have you been? I was-“ Matt began to scold him, far more shrilly than he’d intended, when to his horror, Lotor, looking more blue than purple, took two uncharacteristically halting, stumbling steps, betraying none of his usual grace, and unexpectedly collapsed onto the floor, as the door closed behind him.

“Highness!” Matt cried, dropping the datapad he had been fruitlessly trying to read and bolting to his side.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” Matt demanded, kneeling, his eyes and hands searching frantically for blood, for other signs of injury, frustrated by the concealing Druid’s robes.

“Poison,” Lotor whispered between wheezing gasps for breath, even as his face took on a deep indigo hue, while the amber of his eyes darkened and dimmed.

Matts blood ran cold as he leapt to his feet and raced to the fresher that opened onto the living area. He tore open the bottom cabinet and yanked out the healing kit, the one for poison, instead of wounds, or burns, cursing not that Lotor had so many, but that he needed them all.

He ran back to Lotor and ripped open the kit. He yanked an ampoule of quintessence out of the protective foam and pressed the preloaded syringe to the now prominent blood vessel in Lotor’s neck exactly as Lotor had taught him and depressed the auto plunger, watching the amber liquid vanish with a soft hiss, dosing him with the full contents.

“Which antidote? Which poison? Dentrax, kevta or redish?” he demanded, ignoring the other 18 ampoules. Lotor’s symptoms – impaired respiration, flushing of the skin, and loss of motor coordination – matched all three. The loss of light in his eyes was his quintessence flickering, sputtering, as he fought to live.

Lotor’s lips moved soundlessly, almost imperceptibly, not forming any recognizable words, in spite of the quintessence now coursing through his system.

“You’re turning more blue than purple, but…” Matt forced open Lotor’s jaw, carefully examining his tongue and then his nose. His tongue wasn’t swollen or discolored but his nasal passages were both, so kevta, the poison must have been aerosolized and inhaled, it couldn’t be dentrax or redish. _Please be right, please don’t be something new, something I can’t treat._

Matt snatched up the color-coded syringe and injected him again.

The wheezing and gasping were getting worse by the tick, neither the quintessence nor the kevtatrine having any visible effect.

_What if it wasn’t kevta? What if it’s something he doesn’t have an antidote for? What if I can’t save him?_

Lotor began convulsing and Matt felt as if his heart was about to explode. “No! No, you can’t…” He reached for another ampoule of quintessence, his hands trembling violently, ignoring Lotor’s whispered voice in his memories. _“I’d rather be dead than a quintessence addict.”_ Like his mother and father.

Matt dropped the new vial as the convulsions abruptly stopped, the wheezing stopped, everything stopped, far too suddenly and silently for it to be the antidote working.

“No, no, no,” Matt begged, terrified, his shaking hand reaching desperately for what should have been the pulse in Lotor’s throat, but there was nothing. “Don’t. You can’t,” Matt sobbed, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, his mind momentarily shutting down in his grief, his panic, until his rational scientist’s mind asserted itself and he released his shoulders, positioned his hands on his chest to where he knew his heart to be, and began rhythmically, manually pumping his chest, his CPR training flooding back, as he counted chest compressions.

Then he bent over his face, held his nose shut, and lowered his lips to Lotor’s mouth, hoping that none of the poison in Lotor’s lungs would enter his own, or that if it did, it wasn’t toxic to humans or the residual trace wasn’t enough to harm him, but scarcely caring, as he began breathing for him. Then he began the chest compressions again.

“Live, damn it! I’m not letting you die, you arrogant, self-righteous prick. What would Ashwan say, seeing you like this? How are you serving your stupid Prophet or your nonexistent God by dying?” Matt demanded, needing to see that special scowl Lotor gave him when he was particularly exasperated with him. Then he began breathing for him again, filling his lungs with the air needed to keep his beautiful, precious brain alive, because the thought of reviving Lotor just enough to save him, but as a mindless vegetable, was worse than the thought of him dying.

Matt’s eyes flew to the quintessence ampoule he’d dropped. An overdose could kill him as surely as any poison. _But if he’s already dead..._

The image of an undead Lotor, a mindless, soulless creature, was even worse than the thought of him as a vegetable. Matt loved horror holo vids, he used to try to scare Katie with them, but he’d never be able to watch another zombie holo vid with her ever again, now that he’d had that image burned into his brain.

Matt realized tears were running down his face, splashing gently onto Lotor’s cheeks, because Lotor was dead, and his dad was dead, and Matt would never see Katie or Mom or the Earth again, he was going to die out here, alone, the soldiers and Druids would probably think he was the one who killed Lotor, and…

He gasped as a soft whuff of air filled his mouth and he pulled back, his fingers going to Lotor’s throat, breath held until he felt the first gentle pulse against his questing fingertips. “Oh thank God, thank God,” he sobbed and laughed all at once, because he hadn’t believed in his mother’s God before he came here, science had always been his God, but now he had the ridiculous urge to pray, except the prayers filling his mind were Ashwan’s, in Galran, to his and Lotor’s God _._

“Lotor, if you can hear me, it’s alright, you’re safe. You’re in your chamber, with me, Mattholt. You were poisoned, it was kevta, aerosolized, from the symptoms, physical evidence and process of elimination, and the fact the kevtatrine worked. I’ve given you a single ampoule of quintessence, and used CPR, from home, Earth, I physically massaged your heart with my hands and breathed into your mouth because you… you weren’t… you were… so stay calm, just keep breathing, alright? Because I don’t know if it would work again and… So I’ll protect you, I swear I won’t let anyone corporeal hurt you.” Because if a Druid came in and began phasing and teleporting in and out of this plane of existence, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them.

Lotor’s eyelids fluttered open, and Matt was relieved to see their light, until he realized in the next instant how wrong it was. Lotor’s eyes had always been bright, piercing, but now they were far brighter, yet something was missing, it was as if a vital spark of personality was gone.

“Lotor?” Matt asked, a wealth of meaning in the question of his name as his heart rate spiked and his respiration soared, as he started hyperventilating in terror. _“Can you hear me? Are you still you? Was I too late? What have I done?”_

“Calm yourself,” Lotor commanded.

The panic and despair drained out of Matt like water from sink with the drain plug removed, because Lotor’s eyes were all wrong, but his voice held the familiar, gentle, chiding tone he was certain Lotor reserved only for him.

“You’re alright! When I saw your eyes I… Oh! It’s the quintessence, isn’t it? The ampoule I injected you with. That’s what it does, doesn’t it? No wonder you hate it so much.” While double majoring in organic chemistry and xenobiology, Matt had briefly experimented with a few select drugs, in the earliest days of the pharmaceutical portion of his studies, when he had foolishly decided to conduct some self-trials to test certain concoctions he’d made. It only took a single incident of Shiro finding him stoned out of his mind in his lab and playing with a test tube of acid to cease that insanely dangerous practice. _Stop thinking about Shiro!_ The command was a hopeless and pointless one. Shiro had been an integral part of his life for nearly five years, he was a like a brother to him, and he’d probably never see him again.

“You will tell me in detail of _seepeeare_ ,” Lotor commanded.

“You heard that? Scratch that. Obviously you heard, or you wouldn’t be asking.” He felt like an idiot. At least he hadn’t said anything incriminating. _Or did I?_ He wasn’t really sure exactly what he’d been babbling, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t anything bad.

0 0 0

Lotor was genuinely interested in hearing about _seepeeare_ , because Mattholt had never mentioned it before, and from what little he had said, it sounded suspiciously like he had actually died, for a time, and the thought that Mattholt might somehow be able to reverse death was too astonishing to be believed without further proof than his word, though Mattholt had never yet lied to him. But more, he had wanted to remove the sadness and loss from those gentle brown eyes, from his precious angelic yet impish face.

_Because obviously inhaling poison isn’t foolish and self-destructive enough for you, for one day, now you’re risking revealing your heart as well as stopping it._

Although the telltale tear streaks down Mattholt’s cheeks indicated his heart was not the only one at risk. He’d seen Mattholt cry far more often than he wished, though it had seldom been in person, mostly as he surreptitiously watched on the security monitor in his room, when they both should have been sleeping, to ensure Mattholt didn’t attempt self harm. He never wished to see Mattholt cry, not when his eyes should glow with the fire of his soul, his quintessence far brighter than any his parents raped from an entire planet.

_Stop thinking about him like that. You know your mother would target him if she were to discover him, if she even suspected you held any feelings for him, regardless of whether you yet know their depth. Merely his presence in your life, in your quarters is reason enough. Do you want to get him killed?_

“We are at a quandary. You have saved my life, you have repaid your Life Debt, but were I to release you from my service, you would never survive,” Lotor stated with a coolness and rationality he did not feel, as he struggled to sit, but his limbs would not yet obey him. Just the thought of Mattholt no longer being under his protection threatened to set his heart racing, and he could not risk yet another abrupt change to his circulatory system while the lingering poison still coursed within his veins.

“Don’t try to move yet. You probably shouldn’t even be talking. I’m not about to leave while you’re lying here. Or after. I’m not a fool. I know I’d die quickly here, without your protection. My strengths are not those which are valued in slaves. A strong, nimble mind filled with knowledge housed in even the body of a weak slave is a threat to most of your people. You alone see it as an asset, see _me_ as valuable. Only I know I’m not really a servant to you, just like you’re not really my master.”

Mattholt took a deep, bracing breath and Lotor prepared himself for the ultimatum he suspected was coming.

“That being said, you’re right. The balance sheet is even now, a life for a life, so technically I am free to leave. But instead, I have a proposal for you,” Mattholt stated intently. “A life for a life. I want to renew my Life Debt to you. Please, I know you won’t ever let me speak about him to you, but I want you to save Shiro, the way you saved me. Even if we can’t leave here, I need to know he’s safe, that he’s not being forced to do terrible things, because he’s trying to stay alive so he can rescue me and Dad. He probably doesn’t know Dad’s dead, or where I am, and… He’s like a brother to me, and he got hurt trying to protect us, and then he tried saving me and ended up the Champion, and he’s so kind and gentle and honorable, I don’t even want to think about what being forced to kill people has been doing to him, it makes me sick just thinking about it.”

 _When did I become so helpless against that voice, those eyes?_ “Tell me of your friend, what you know of him, so I might be convinced he is worthy of my aid, in spite of the harm he caused you.”

Mattholt did so, at length and in detail, beginning when they met as roommates, their first day in the Academy, a military training school he attended. The thought of the man who had attacked Mattholt so viciously sharing a room with him was infuriating. Hearing Mattholt say over and over how he was his best friend would have been unbearable, did he not also repeat how he was like a brother, though Lotor could not understand the dichotomy of the two statements. Brothers lie, cheat and betray, they step upon you to rise above you, they ensure you are blamed for their failures and mistakes, or simply kill you to remove you from their path. Poor friends also betrayed, but true friends, best friends, were like Sword Brothers, they would kill for you, die for you. Understanding, jealousy and fury hit Lotor like a knife to the heart with the revelation.

“A Sword Brother. Shiro is your Sword Brother,” Lotor stated, the words like acid upon his tongue.

Mattholt was giving him that frightened and wary look that he had given him the night they first met, drawing back from him fearfully. “I’m… um… not sure what that is?”

“A soldier who swears loyalty to you upon his blood, who will kill and die for you, who should cut off his own arm before he would ever harm you with it,” Lotor seethed. Sword brothers were more than husbands, they were husband and brother both, the only family a soldier needed. Which meant Shiro had sworn oath to Mattholt, lain with him, and betrayed him.

The comm panel sounded. “Lotor, report to my laboratory immediately.”

 _Mother._ Lotor’s heart began pounding at the sound of her voice, as fear of her subsumed his fury over Shiro. He could not face her now, not like this, with only the ragged remnants of the quintessence left, the jagged edges of it unraveling his temper, his mind, yet not powerful enough to provide the physical strength he needed to stand, to walk. He needed strength, sharpness of wit, at least the illusion of clarity and control if he was to survive this meeting. He would pay the consequences later, if he survived.

She would not expect a verbal reply. Either he would come, or he would not, because he was dead. Nothing short of death precluded response to her summons.

He turned his back on Mattholt and reached into the antitoxin kit for a syringe of quintessence.

Mattholt’s eyes widened. “Wait! What are you doing? You told me that-“

“Silence!” Lotor snapped, as he snatched up the syringe and pressed it to his throat, depressing the plunger.

It was as if fire lit along every nerve in his body. He gasped and stiffened as every muscle convulsed simultaneously, as his body shook with spasms. Hearing heightened, sight sharpened as light brightened and color exploded, cloth against skin bled from agony to ecstasy and back again, he could both smell and taste Mattholt’s growing terror, it was exquisite and addictive, **he** was exquisite, addictive, and Mattholt belonged to him, not to that murderous betrayer Shiro. He would make certain Mattholt knew who his master was. Lotor turned on him, took a step towards him.

The look of horror and denial on Mattholt’s face was like a bucket of icewater in his own. Purpose and reason returned abruptly, the world snapped back into focus, his perception of it still heightened, twisted, warped, wrong, but at least he was once again functional, rational.

“Stay here,” he commanded, not trusting himself to say more. And then he left, in a twist of smoke the color of his newly blackened soul.

0 0 0

Lotor appeared not directly outside his mother’s laboratory but around the corner from it, recovering the time he had wasted with his weakness, yet far enough away that he would not trigger her wards. He inhaled and then exhaled twice, deeply, until his face slipped into the familiar mask of calm control, and then he walked to the corner and turned, and headed down the corridor to his mother’s laboratory.

The door opened the moment he appeared before it, and he entered.

“You’re alive,” Haggar stated, sounding not relieved or even impressed, considering the particularly virulent and fast-acting nature of the poison he had just survived, but annoyed, until she turned and saw his eyes, and then a wild glee lit her own unnaturally glowing yellow eyes.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he stated drily, hiding the pain and frustration drowning him, the knowledge that without the quintessence coursing through him, the stolen life, and Mattholt’s assistance, he would not be, even as the remembered shock and censure in those inquisitive brown eyes flooded him with guilt.

His mother’s glee did not diminish, though her words were scolding. “You lie, twice. You prefer life, and if you cared about my perception of you, you would not disappoint me.”

The quintessence roared in his veins like an enraged lion. “Don’t you think six attempts to poison me in as many months is excessive?” he challenged. He had hidden the other far less successful attempts from Mattholt.

She met his gaze unflinchingly. “No amount is too many or too few. You need to be prepared for when others strike. That is why you report to me each time, so I may study the effects upon you. But in answer to your question, I have tested you four times in the past six months.

The quintessence in his blood turned to ice, even as it helped him find his voice without hesitation. “I trust you located, interrogated and executed the two would be assassins?”

Her lips twisted in what might have once been a smile. “I located and interrogated them. They are currently testing their skills upon one another. I am collecting useful data.”

His frozen quintessence ignited with his rage. “So they may try again, with the approval of their Empress?” he shot back, his tongue forming the words without conscious volition, even as a portion of his mind screamed in terror for him to be silent.

His mother’s eyes narrowed to slits and blazed with golden fire. “You will call me by my correct title. If you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head, I will remove your slave’s,” she promised coldly, rather than viciously, with a level of deadliness he had before only ever seen directed at his father.

Lotor ceased breathing, the words _“she knows”_ screaming across his mind over and over.

“Yes, I know you have a slave,” she stated with feigned disregard.

“We have many,” he stated levelly, tamping down the panic that screamed and sobbed with the wails of a young child in his mind, his memory. She’s said it in the same tone now, as before. _“I know you have a vornix.”_  

“The Empire, yes. But not you personally, ever,” she pressed.

“You have your playthings. I thought I would learn firsthand the appeal,” he said dismissively, regulating his heartbeat and breathing through force of will alone.

“You have not brought him to my laboratory,” she commented.

His careful efforts at calm shattered at her words, as he pictured Mattholt, strapped to her operating table, screaming, as she cut him apart.

“I have my own laboratory and my own experiments. You want me to show initiative, and interest in your work.” Somehow he kept his voice level, played the role of the dutiful son he had never been. He was thankful now that he had risked actually bringing Mattholt to his laboratory, though as a researcher, not a test subject. It lent credence to his claim.

“So he is a specimen, not a pet?”she pressed.

Panic flooded him anew, as the trap sprang shut around him. Mattholt was damned either way. Specimens were to be shared. Pets were a weakness and not to be tolerated. They became specimens, as his vornix had, long ago, when he had been a naïve and trusting child.

“I have a special treat for you, a reward for surviving the kevta, for realizing only quintessence might save you, for acquiring and possessing some, for using it, for taking an interest in my work,” she stated. With a wave of her hand the wall behind her slid aside, revealing her operating theater. It was occupied, by a specimen he could only catch a glimpse of, strapped to the operating table, with Druids surrounding it like carrion screv circling a wounded lerx.

Terror ripped through Lotor anew when he heard begging and recognized not only the language, but the words, English words, “Help me, please!”

Fortunately he realized the voice was wrong before he suicidally attacked his mother, before the subject was revealed: Shiro, Mattholt’s Sword Brother, the Champion. He was strapped to the table. His lower right arm was roughly bandaged with the tunic of a slave, saturated with deep red blood, the bandage also splattered in dark green, apparently the original wearer’s blood, as he was wearing a tunic of his own.

“Our Champion carelessly damaged his sword arm in the Arena tonight, at the fight you missed, because you were too busy carelessly falling into my trap and being poisoned. I was preparing to treat him when you arrived. The injury to the limb is severe, but I could save his arm, if I chose to. There is even a chance that it would function properly again, that it might be strong enough for combat. Or I could cut it off and replace it, instead, with something more powerful. I have already prepared a number of limbs for such an occasion. I will allow you to decide. Tell me my son, which do you choose?”

Shiro, Mattholt’s Sword Brother. He would never survive another night in the Arena were he not at full capacity. _“A chance”. “It might.” “Or I could cut it off and replace it, instead.”_ Her words slithered through his mind like a skrith. She already had an arm at the ready; he could see it on a tray beside the operating table. Lotor knew what she had been about to do.

His own words from earlier tauntingly roared across him mind like a flashflood in a desiccated riverbed. _“A soldier who swears loyalty to you upon his blood, who will kill and die for you, **who should cut off his own arm before he would ever harm you with it**.”_

“Cut it off and replace it with something better, something that is not flawed, that will not fail you,” Lotor decreed hoarsely, his mouth as dry as the riverbed before the water hit.

Wild glee lit his mother’s face, triumph, and he knew he had chosen correctly, that he had made the only possible choice.

But then, to his horror, she handed him the laser saw, and suddenly memory flooded him, images he’d blocked from his mind over a decade-and-half ago, of bloody fur, animal screams mixed with his own, and a laser saw in tiny shaking hands, as his mother showed him again and again where to cut. He’d vomited over his breakfast the next morning and embraced the true tenets of Ashwan by nightfall, swearing fervently that he would never again take a life. What a naïve child he had been.

“No! Please! It will heal, don’t, you can’t!” Shiro begged, fighting like a madman against the restraints, his eyes riveted to the saw.

Lotor’s hand did not shake this time, as he raised the saw, even as the words of the meal prayer mockingly began running through his head, as he approached the helpless, begging, struggling man Mattholt loved.

 _“Thank you for your sacrifice,_  
  so that your quintessence might join that within me.  
I am not worthy.  
  
_To my eyes give clear vision,_  
_so I might see though the illusions that bind me._  
I am a blind fool.

 _To my ears give sharp hearing,_  
  so I might know deception in all its myriad guises.  
I have been deceived.  
__  
To my hands and feet give both strength and gentleness,  
  so that I might protect the life around me.  
I am too weak to protect you.  
  
_To my mind give the wisdom and awareness to differentiate truth from falsehood,_  
_so that I might realize the breadth of knowledge I yet lack._  
Suffering is the only truth.  
  
Swiftly and deliberately, mercilessly, he sliced downwards and Shiro screamed.

 _To my spirit give patience and perseverance, humility and nobility of purpose,_  
_so I might bend in the wind but never break._  
  
He broke.


	12. Intervention

Matt stared at the spot Lotor had been standing in a moment ago. Lotor was gone. Barely recovered from being poisoned, from _dying_ , his heart had _stopped_ , he hadn’t been _breathing_ , he was drugged out of his mind, and he… he was going to see someone who clearly terrified him.

_Was that his mother? She didn’t use any title or rank, just his name. It must have been her._

For a wild moment he debated slipping on his Initiate’s robes and running off to somehow save him, but he was powerless against her, and he had no idea where Lotor was, in any case, and getting himself caught or killed wouldn’t help anyone. But there was something he could do to help. He glared down at the four remaining loaded syringes, the vile golden liquid, the image of dropping them all down the disposal chute roaring across his mind’s eye.

_What if he’s poisoned again. Or if he needs to fight her? I can’t throw it away. But I can hide it._

He had no idea how long Lotor would be gone, but he doubted he would be back before he could finish. He needed to put it somewhere that it would be well hidden, but quickly accessible. He took the new toolkit he had yet to use and took apart the broken hairdryer, this time fully gutting the insides, and after a brief hesitation, throwing them down the disposal chute, and then he placed the four syringes inside. They barely fit, which meant they wouldn’t rattle, which was good. He tested it without sealing it tightly, to be sure. Then he sealed it and replaced it in his cabinet.

Belatedly, he remembered the single dose of quintessence in each of the three other trauma kits, and cursed. He dug them out of the fresher cabinet, and brought them to his room. They wouldn’t be as easily accessible, but well hidden was more important, this time. He took apart the light switch panel and hid the three syringes in the open space he had remembered seeing, then reassembled the panel. He tested the lights, which still worked.

Then he searched their quarters from top to bottom, not confident he had found them all, and not wanting to risk that he hadn’t. Lotor had shown him his meditation chamber, but he had yet to go through the two other doorways, one of which led to Lotor’s bedroom, and the other, his library. Fortunately he remembered Lotor’s warning about the wards before he attempted to breach the door. He would have to hope there were no additional syringes of quintessence inside.

He had only known Lotor for five months, though it sometimes felt as if this life was the only one he had ever known, that Dad and Mom and Katie and Shiro and Earth were all just a dream. He wasn’t sure whether Lotor used the drug more frequently than he had implied. He’d seen no signs that he was an addict, but his reaction…

Matt had mentally classified it as a combat drug, something to pull the full potential from your cells when you needed it, to survive. You’d crash afterwards, you’d fall hard, but hopefully when you had the luxury of time to recover, without enemies trying to kill you. But the reality was, he knew too little about quintessence, only what Lotor had told him, and he hadn’t gone into any detail. In fact, considering how important it could be, in retrospect, he’d glossed over exactly what it was and what it could do. It had been more of an “if I’m at death’s door, use it on me,” sort of command, rather than an explanation.

“Why didn’t you research it? Why didn’t you press for more detail? Because you were afraid he’d shut down your lessons entirely, after suddenly offering to teach you the world? I had no idea it could be that dangerous. But I’m going to learn now,” Matt swore aloud, in Galran.

He froze at the sound of his own voice. “You’re speaking Galran again. While no one’s here. You’re always speaking Galran now, with him, but he’s not here. Shouldn’t you be speaking English?” He scowled and snatched up the datapad. “Jeznat! What does that matter? Focus, idiot!”

He typed in the search and began reading, but he was far better with spoken Galran than written, and the advanced vocabulary itself was a challenge. Quickly frustrated with the complex words, he switched the data relay from visual to vocal and let the room translate for him. His interest quickly turned to horror. Quintessence was literally the energy of life. It was “harvested” by killing living things: plants, animals, fungi, lichen, bacteria, anything that wasn’t inanimate and inert. “Amber is the distilled life’s energy of a single or multiple organisms of a single species. Violet is the distilled life’s energy of multiple species, usually the biosphere and ecosphere of a planet.” Entire planets had been harvested, with their complete biosphere, ecospheres, everything, they’d killed everything, on entire _planets_ , genocide, they’d committed genocide, repeatedly, destroyed races, species, worlds, solar systems.

“Ashwan! What if they do that to Earth? What if they’ve already done that? After they captured the three of us, did they go there and collect everyone as slaves? There’s no way we could fight against them, not with our primitive technology, compared to theirs. That single ship was huge, and they have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions. They’ve spent the last 10,000 years conquering not just a single galaxy, but the entire universe. _Are Mom and Katie…?_

“Stop it! You can’t think about them right now. You need to help Lotor.” He focused on the datapad. “Tell me everything about known effects on Galran physiology. And Galran hybrid physiology. I don’t know what… Wait! First tell me what is Prince Lotor’s ancestry, Emperor Zarkon’s son?”

The datapad sorted out the multiple questions and replied, providing a condensed history as well as the species information Matt had been interested in.

“Prince Lotor is half Galran and half Altaean, the son of the Galran Emperor Zarkon and the Druid Priestess and Princess Alena, the younger half-sister of Queen Asura of Altaea, who was forced into a political marriage with the corrupt King Alfor of Altaea. Following the untimely demise of her elder sibling, due to Alfor’s incompetence and negligence, Princess Alena defected to Galra during the start of the righteous rebellion led by the Black Paladin of Voltron, Zarkon, who ascended the throne upon his own world in order to overthrow the tyrannical rule of King Alfor and free his kingdom.”

Matt rolled his eyes. _“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a case of ‘History is written by the victor’,”_ he thought wryly.

“Princess Alena changed her name to Haggar upon her defection, and following her marriage to Zarkon, the Priestess quickly rose to the title of High Druid, consolidating the military and religious might of Galra into a single family, and heralding the glorious beginning of the proud and mighty Galran Empire, where they have reigned for 10,042 years.”

“10,042 years? He told me that before, 10 millennia… Are they immortal? How long do Galra and Altaeans live? How old is Prince Lotor? What’s his lifespan?” Matt asked in shock.

“The average Galra lifespan is 200 years, though few live past 120, due to the decline in agility and physical strength brought about by advanced age, which decreases their battle worthiness. Altaeans live an average of 1,000 years. Emperor Zarkon is 10,132 years of age. The High Druid Haggar is 10,104. Prince Lotor is 24 years of age, but as he was genetically engineered and decanted in the High Druid’s laboratory, his lifespan and exact genetic structure are classified.”

Matt balked. So far, nothing he had ever asked the datapad was classified, and he belatedly realized that he had such extensive access because it was Lotor’s, that he must have been using his clearance codes without realizing it. But his genetic structure was classified, even from him. Which meant either only his mother, Haggar, knew it, or perhaps Emperor Zarkon too. And he hadn’t been born, he’d been decanted, in a laboratory.

“What physiological effects would amber quintessence have on Prince Lotor?” he asked, with breath held that that information wasn’t also classified.

“Enhanced agility, strength, perception and creativity, and accelerated and enhanced healing.”

“What are the negative effects?” Matt asked with a frown.

“There are no negative effects.”

Matt glared. _Every drug has both positive and negative effects. There’s no such thing as a perfect drug._

“What is the minimum quantity and frequency required for addiction in a Galra/Altaean hybrid?”

“Quintessence is a non-addictive substance. Increased quantity and frequency increases the effectiveness.”

Matt glared at the datapad. More revisionist reality, apparently.

“What is the long-term effect of repeated regular quintessence usage?” Matt demanded.

“Immortality.”

“Quiznak. Show me the chemical structure and the alteration to the body and brain of a Galra/Altaean hybrid,” he ordered.

Matt studied the imagery in increasing frustration. “This isn’t chemistry, it’s alchemy. Now I know what the difference is.”

“Is there a drug or substance that can be administered to counteract the effects without endangering the patient?” Matt demanded.

“Once injected or ingested, quintessence becomes a part of the new host body. It cannot be removed. It can only become diminished, over time, as the energy is expended,” the datapad claimed.

“So the more a person exercises, the faster it is expended?” Matt theorized.

“The more a person’s body is injured, strained or taxed, the faster the quintessence is diminished.”

Matt didn’t even want to think about Lotor being injured. “Please be safe.”

0 0 0

“Satisfactory,” Haggar admitted, as she inspected Lotor’s work, the Galran forearm and elbow grafted onto the stump of Shiro’s right bicep. Shiro had stopped screaming, finally unconscious, having succumbed to the pain, the shock, the horror of the surgery.

Lotor was staring not at the elegantly crafted replacement, but at the severed and discarded limb, the fingers that had once touched Mattholt, now lifeless useless meat, and then his gaze flickered to his own fingers, stained red with the alien’s blood. His stomach once again rebelled, but he swallowed down this wave of vomit as he had the others.

“We will begin testing and training immediately, as soon as he is conscious. You may go. I have no further use for you. For now you may keep your plaything, your pet. I do not wish a distraction from this specimen, and the more attached you grow to your pet, the stronger you will become when you remove his impact upon you. We killed your last pet too quickly. I will determine when the time is right for this one to die,” she stated.

“Yes, Mother,” he responded by rote, cowed, because there was no other response. His mother was absolute, Mattholt was doomed to die, and he was fated to be his torturer, his executioner.

She was already turned away from him, eagerly examining her latest project.

Lotor managed to exit the room with the proper decorum, and walk down the corridor, and turn the corner away from her sight. He made another two steps before he doubled over and collapsed, stomach heaving, hand clamped firmly over his mouth. He could not vomit here, in the hall, where anyone might see. His quarters; he need to go back. As he began the teleport, his mind rebelled against seeing Mattholt, while he was still covered in Shiro’s blood, his concentration waivered and his thoughts twisted, warping the teleport as he vanished.

0 0 0

Thace locked the door to his quarters and made the usual systematic search for hidden cameras and listening devices, before reverting to his true Altaean form in relief. He’d had centuries of practice maintaining his morphed Galran form for extended periods of time, but given a long enough duration, it still proved taxing.

This was his fifth identity. He’d “died gloriously in battle” four times, careful to stage his death before anyone could begin to question why he failed to wither and die. As an Altaean, his lifespan was five times that of a Galra. Today he was feeling every one of his 523 years.

The Champion had been badly injured in the Arena tonight, in the battle he’d just finished watching. He’d been injured before, of course, his face and body scarred by those injuries, but this time he’d stripped the bloody tunic from his opponent’s corpse and used it to roughly bandage his arm before saluting the Emperor, and he’d used his left arm to make the salute, not his right. He’d staggered towards the exit but not made it there before collapsing.

The Druid Witch Haggar herself had personally appeared by his side and teleported him away.

One Terran was dead, in a tunnel collapse on Tangier, and the two survivors were both in the custody of the Druids. Assuming the second was still alive, after five months, which was highly doubtful. Even after traveling all the way to Tangier, he had not had a single opportunity to inquire about his son.

He rubbed his hand down his face in frustration. Tonight he needed a break from such thoughts. He needed to relax and unwind, because if he remained coiled tightly like this, he would inevitably break.

Thace stripped on his way to the fresher, shedding his uniform in relief, but bringing his House dagger with him, from force of habit. He was going to take a long, relaxing bath, instead of a shower, he was going to imbibe a few glasses of loshal, and solitarily take care of other needs that had been too often neglected after Raena’s death.

By the time he rose from the bath and toweled himself dry, he was feeling almost languid. He slipped on his robe, not bothering with the sash, or anything else. Feeling shamelessly hedonistic, he picked up his dagger and padded barefoot back out to his sleeping quarters. He slipped his dagger beneath his pillow and then laid back on the bed with a contented sigh.

Calm vanished as a hooded and robed figure appeared at the foot of his bed, materializing from the very air, in a twist of black smoke.

Thace bolted from the bed, snatching his Marmoran dagger from beneath his pillow and instantly extending it to shortsword form, as he attacked, leaping for the cloaked intruder. An answering blade flashed in the intruder’s hand, and his attack was met with a dizzying flurry of blocks, though oddly no offensive blows, and no further magic, even as the knowledge he was fighting a Druid, in his quarters, hammered through his brain.

The Druid had seen his true form, knew he was Altaean, here, on the flagship, where no known members of House Marmora were posted. Not only was he discovered, but the very existence of the Blade was revealed, he’d exposed all of them, unless he killed this Druid before he could report what he’d learned. Except the fact that he was here at all meant they knew, Haggar knew, they were trying to capture him to learn the identities of the others, and no one could resist a Druid’s torture for long. Thace realized with a lurching heart that his own survival was no longer an option, if any of the Blade were to survive.

He unleashed a dizzying display of fruitless, ineffective attacks and then leapt back, his knife arcing up towards his face, to thrust his blade through his eye, his brain, so he couldn’t be healed, couldn’t betray the Blade to the Druids, even as an image of his Sword Brother Ulaz’s grief and helpless rage at his death burnt into his brain. His final thought, though, the last image, was not of the man who had stood by his side for centuries, but of the last time he’d held the infant son he’d now never know in his arms.

“No! No more blood!” the Druid roared, as an arc of chartreuse lightning crackled from his finger tips, slamming into Thace’s hand, knocking his blade across the room, even as the concealing hood was pushed back from the Druid’s face with the burst of power.

Thace gaped in stunned disbelief. _Prince Lotor._

0 0 0

Lotor reappeared still on his knees, astonished he had reappeared at all, upon a floor and not imbedded within one, for having been so dangerously distracted, after feeling the wrongness of the teleport as it shifted and twisted. He jerked his head up, bolting to his feet, as he automatically reached out with his powers to detect nearby threats, the survival reaction instinctive. _Impossible._ But his mind confirmed what his eyes revealed: a half naked Altaean. There were no House Marmora on their flagship, his father did not trust any to serve so close to him, so had he botched the teleport so badly that he had materialized on a different ship?

The Altaean’s reaction to his arrival was even more astonishing. He lunged, the knife in his hand somehow becoming a sword, as he slashed, attempting to bisect him.

Lotor’s reaction was instinctive again, ingrained from years of training to hone his combat skills, to protect his life. He parried with his own blade, which he’d drawn without thought as he stood, slashing and blocking the deadly strikes. As the Altaean pressed his attack, Lotor realized, impressed, that they would have been evenly matched, were it not for the quintessence enhancing his reflexes.

And then the Altaean’s efforts redoubled, Lotor was barely able to block each attack, until unexpectedly, the man pulled back, the blade arcing towards his own face, and Lotor realized, horrified, he was trying to take his own life, to keep from being captured.

“No! No more blood!” he roared, arcing lightning from his hands, slamming into the blade and flinging it across the room, use of the flaringly bright offensive power shattering his Shadowspell, knocking the formerly concealing hood from his head, the once powerful ward now inert. He pinned the Altaean to the wall with his magick so he was helpless, and no longer able to attempt to harm himself.  

The Altaean was staring up at him in shock and recognition, confusion and sorrow, resignation and fear, his emotions were flooding Lotor’s heightened and straining senses.

“Who are you? Your name, your rank. What ship is this?” Lotor demanded, weaving his magicks into the question, so the Altaean would be forced to answer.

“You don’t know?” the Altaean asked, thunderstruck. “I am Commander Thace. You attacked me in my quarters… This is the Emperor’s flagship, the _Obliterator_ ,” he responded, against his will, unable to resist Lotor’s compulsion to speak, with the augmentation of the quintessence.

“House Marmora does not serve upon the _Obliterator_ ,” Lotor argued, shocked that the Altaean could have lied to him with the level of quintessence enhanced power he was using. “Who are you and why are you here? What is your mission? How long have you been here?” he demanded, consciously flooding his voice with the power of the stolen quintessence.

The Altaean’s eyes flooded with terror, guilt and impotent fury, and then he spoke, harshly, the words clearly torn from him. “The Blade of Marmora has served wherever our visible House does not. For 10,000 years we have fought against the Empire, attacking it from within, to kill Emperor Zarkon, the Witch Haggar, and the rest of the Druids, to free the universe from your parents’ tyranny.”

Thankfully, the battle rush and subsequent use of his power in battle and interrogation had burnt some of the quintessence away, calming both Lotor’s heaving stomach and churning mind. Lotor snorted in disgust. “You’ve spent 10,000 years trying to destroy the Empire? I can’t help but notice you’ve yet to succeed. You’ve clearly done a quiznaking poor job of it, haven’t you?” he scoffed in derision.

“We’re not trying to destroy it. It’s far too late for that. The worlds are too interdependent, the distances and connections between them far too vast. Civilization would collapse entirely without the Empire: there would be famine, civil wars, petty dictatorships springing up everywhere to fill the vacuum of power. It would be anarchy, far worse than what we have now,” the Altaean spy and assassin argued.

“So you would kill the Imperial Family? Then which one of you would ascend the throne in our place?” Lotor challenged dryly.

“Not us. You. We’ve been hoping you would one day join us. We’ve been trying to reach out to you ever since you were a child, but they’ve kept too tight a rein on you. You’ve been sheltered and reclusive, and none of us have been able to get close enough to ever speak with you,” Commander Thace argued.

“Of course you have. So the assassins who have been trying to poison me aren’t yours?” Lotor countered skeptically.

To his surprise, the response was immediate and adamant; the Altaean was no longer fighting against his power. “No! We’ve never targeted you. We’ve already prevented at least six attempts on your life. We can’t afford for you to die. You’re the only one who has any hope of succeeding both the Emperor and the High Druid, the only one both the Galran military and the Order might follow,” Thace argued.

“Then why try to kill me, when you finally had me right where you wanted me, where we might speak?” Lotor demanded.

“I didn’t know it was you. You kept your face hidden. All I knew was a Druid had entered my cabin and seen me in my true form, as an Altaean. I assumed I’d been discovered, that you were here to capture me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist your interrogation. No one can resist the Druids,” he replied bitterly, the words once again forced from his tongue.

“That is one of the first things that must change. You will tell me of the Blade of Marmora, and I will continue to ensure you do not lie. If I am satisfied as to both your worthiness and your trustworthiness, you will have gained a powerful ally tonight. I will provide you with protective wards, to aid you in your deceptions and your goals,” Lotor promised grimly. If he wasn’t worthy, Lotor would kill him, without hesitation.

He prayed he might be telling the truth, that he might be worthy of his trust. Lotor knew he was not powerful enough to destroy his parents on his own, but with the Godsend of an Altaean army at his side, he might possibly live to see victory. _Praise Ashwan_. Though Mattholt would not, now that his mother had set her sights upon him. It might be a matter of a few krone, or days, weeks, months – time mattered little to one who was immortal – but she would strike.

“As I aid you, you will aid me,” he demanded. If he found he could trust them, he would use them as a resource to smuggle Mattholt off the ship, to whatever the safest haven was that they could find.

He slowly and deliberately sheathed his knife but cautiously kept the Altaean within the thrall of his power. “We have much to discuss.”


	13. Oath of Allegiance, Blood of Betrayal

 

In the krone that followed, the more Lotor learned about the activities of both House Marmora and the Blade they sheltered, the more impressed he became with their dedication, their skill, their conviction. The Blade had been doing exactly what he had been doing for the past decade-and-a-half, systematically undermining his parents, but for 10,000 years, not 15, with far greater success, save for his two crowning achievements so far, one five years earlier, and the second only within the past year, both master strokes against his mother and the entire Order.

First, he had discovered a lost colony, Sidhehastara, and kept it hidden, instead of revealing its presence to anyone, he had reported the world as lifeless and lacking in any desirable resources. Then last year, with the assistance of a small army of those colonials, he had obliterated an entire Galran convoy, to fake the destruction of the single transport ship they protected. Both actions were to save the future of an entire species, to prevent the genocide of a race that his parents had been particularly eager to exploit and destroy, that they had systematically hunted, the only race in all the known universe that had presented any concerted challenge to them in the past millennia of their reign: the Aos Sí.

But Lotor could never share either of those triumphs and endanger those he had saved merely for the sake of his pride, his ego. Until his parents were dead and the Druidic Order purged of their evil and influence, no one would learn of the 35,461 Aos Sí infants and children, the 8,637 adult caregivers and nobility he had saved on that transport ship, the one he had seen safely escorted to the thriving lost colony he had discovered quite by accident, one at least 500 million other Aos Sí called home.

Sidhehastara was a hidden paradise, the epitome of a verdant and peaceful world, one that had been formed for those who quietly seceded from the Aos Sí Empire, in protest of their expansion fifteen millennia before. The colony’s entire philosophy revolved around pacifism, and the protection of life, as propounded by Hastara, their historical equivalent of Ashwan. But like Ashwan, they acknowledged that sometimes to preserve life, one must take life. They had not hesitated to send twenty of their ships, to use their magicks to jam communications and create the asteroid storm that had overwhelmed and killed the three Druids on the convoy ships guarding the transport, along with 221 Galran soldiers, even as they shielded the precious transport ship from harm.

The death of the guards upon the transport was just as ruthless, as purposeful, but no more personal. For a soldier, death dealt from a distance can be detached, but to look into the eyes of the one you kill is something else again entirely. But for an Aos Sí, or a Druid Acolyte Prince, the cessation of life, the terror and pain and disbelief are shared and experienced, regardless of the distance between them. It was not the first time Lotor had killed. Neither his father nor mother realized he not only had the capability and will to kill, when necessary, but that he had already done so, when necessity had called for it.   
  
The final act of magick of the Aos Sí liberators was to send desperate, garbled, distorted transmissions, frantic calls to aid as the supposedly crippled ship was allegedly pulled within the gravity well of the nearby star and consumed by it, so their deception would not be discovered.

0 0 0

It was terrifying to be trapped within your own mind, to give voice to words you would never speak, had you the choice. But as he and the Druid Prince spoke, Thace gradually lost that fear, in spite of still being under his thrall. Prince Lotor was nothing like his father or his mother, but was instead everything that had heard whispered rumor of, had hoped he might be, and far more. They had thought him powerless, cautious and passive, a pacifist to the core. Instead Thace discovered a man of strong passions, keen intelligence, quick wit, and subtle yet overpowering charisma, with a dry and often self-deprecating sense of humor, one who had been tested in battle many times, from his claims, all of which were delivered in such a manner he did not doubt they were true. Were it not for Lotor’s youth, and his own strong bonds to Ulaz, Thace might actually have been foolishly and inappropriately tempted by the undeniably desirable Prince.

Prince Lotor’s face flushed a deep purple. “Part of that appreciation you just mentally voiced is because you are yet in my thrall, bonded to me by it. But so you are not humiliated by that knowledge, and perhaps develop resentment against me for it, please know that I am as strongly affected as you, that in order to reach such a deep level of connection to you, I too have sacrificed much. Know that a genuine mutual attraction underlies the thoughts and feelings upon both our parts,” Lotor claimed unexpectedly, as his golden eyes bore deeply into his own. They no longer burned with the unnatural fire of quintessence, but with a far more vivid inner light, which unexpectedly softened in warmth and affection.

He believed the Prince with every fiber of his being, which made it easier to bear that he had an almost irrepressible and irresistible urge to caress his Prince’s face, age, rank, station and circumstances be damned. Only the thought of Ulaz prevented it.

“When you release me from your thrall, what will I feel?” Thace asked cautiously.

“Whatever you feel right now,” Lotor replied, and what had become a soft whisper in his mind over the course of their conversation grew silent, as the Prince withdrew his mental hold.

Thace waited to feel resentment, humiliation, even rage, but instead what he felt was relief, contentment, excitement and hope.

The Prince was watching him, and he could no longer tell whether it was curiously or anxiously.

Thace felt a shadow of loss, sadness. “You are deceptively dangerous in that you are unexpectedly addictive, my Prince,” Thace admitted.

Lotor’s eyes widened fractionally and then once again betrayed that hidden warmth, along with a ghost of mischievous light. “I am also already claimed, so Ulaz need not trouble himself with protecting his Sword Brother’s heart, or his own.”

Thace’s eyes widened. _Who in their right mind would dare risk claiming the Prince? Would another Druid risk Haggar’s wrath? What if she was using that person to manipulate him, to twist his feelings, to control him?_ The Blade would be in deadly danger, if that were the case.

Lotor was watching him intently, warily.

“Are you certain they are not an agent of your mother? Or father?” Thace risked asking.

The Prince’s tension grew, and once again, Thace felt his presence in his mind, this time, a gentle probing whisper, “No. He is instead in immediate deadly danger from her. Now that you have seen you harbor no hatred or ill will towards me for my conversation with you, and I have now assured myself of the truth of that fact as well, I ask you to aid me. I know of only one place in the universe where the one I need to protect might be taken so that he might be safe, where he can be hidden so that she can never find him. But the Blade who takes him there is the only person who can know that location, and because of that, he can never leave there, not until my father and mother have been killed, and their influence upon the Empire erased. I would never ask that of you or Ulaz, who are too crucial to your House and to one another. But is there one who has relatively free movement, whom you would trust on a precarious diplomatic mission, one without phobia towards any alien species, one who would guard him with his life, who would die to protect him?

“Derkon,” Thace stated, without hesitation. “He has recently been assigned to transport slaves to various locations within the Empire, to their benefit, but to his own detriment and danger. It is against his very nature not to free them all. But the slaves we free we do so carefully, selectively. He knows his work is a necessary evil, but it is evil nonetheless and wearing upon him. He will not be able to bear it indefinitely. Not today, not tomorrow, perhaps not for months, but one day, he will crack, and soon after, he will break. We do not wish to lose him. Derkon will protect the one who has claimed you.”

“Tell me all you know of him,” Lotor commanded.

Thace obeyed.

“Agreed. He will be the one. You must inform Derkon about me. I cannot risk being seen speaking with him, or with you, publically. You and I must meet only in private. If my mother were to learn of you, she would target you and soon expose your secret, and then learn of the rest of the Blade. Meanwhile, I will tell… the one I am protecting… what is happening, prepare him,” Lotor stated, clearly not trusting him even with the man’s name. Though rightfully so. He would not be able to keep such knowledge secret from the Druids, though apparently Haggar already knew. It was possible the other Druids did not. Knowledge was power, and Haggar hoarded knowledge the way she hoarded quintessence.

“I must go. I have already been absent a number of krone. I will meet with you again, likely teleport directly into your room again, so I am not seen, though this time your room will actually be the destination I am targeting,” Lotor stated, and then his eyes widened as if realizing the depth of his admission. 

“You truly came here accidentally? You made an error teleporting and survived to speak of it?” Thace asked, stunned.

“Obviously,” Lotor stated dryly, but clearly resenting the need for the admission.

Thace frowned in concern. “It was the quintessence, wasn’t it? We have never before heard rumor of you partaking, as the other Druids do. You appeared… frantic. When first we fought, even… unbalanced, unhinged. Did your mother force it upon you?”

Lotor’s face darkened to a deep purple, whether anger or shame, Thace wasn’t certain, but he realized he had seriously overstepped his bounds and potentially threatened their new alliance. “Forgive me. You must think it is not my concern, but to partake of quintessence is to play with poison. It twists the spirit and overloads the mind, burning out synapses and bringing madness.”

Lotor’s eyes narrowed, his expression now one of indignation, humiliation and barely contained rage. “I am more than passingly familiar with the concept of poison, having tonight survived the 97th such attempt upon my life, 36 of which were at least marginally successful. The earliest was when I was five years old, the first time I made the mistake of attempting to resist my mother’s will. But the most effective was tonight, when I failed utterly and even the quintessence could not save me. I actually died, for a time. And it was not my mother who brought me back, though she was, once again, the one who poisoned me. Her version of a test, or so she claims. I do not deny being off balance tonight. But if you fear me unbalanced by the quintessence, you blame the wrong evil.”

Thace listened in shock to the Prince’s confession, eyes wide with horror. They had known the Prince lived in constant danger from both his parents, but had not dreamt she was actively attacking him, attempting to kill him. “You cannot stay here! We must remove you both, to this safe haven you conceal from me. You are our one hope! We cannot risk losing you!”

 Lotor rubbed his temple and Thace felt his mind gently withdraw once again, as it had before, breaking the link between them.

“Until tonight, I believed I indeed was the Empire’s only hope. I never dreamt there was a small army with which I might ally myself. But I cannot leave. My mother would hunt me to the edge of the universe. She would be merciless, to draw me out of hiding, she knows what harms me, and she would use it against me, against all of us. I am in no more danger than I have been all my 24 years. As long as you hide the one I need to protect, and keep him safe. He is my one weakness.”

If someone had asked Thace before tonight whether the Prince was noble, selfless, heroic, self-sacrificing, Thace would not have been able to answer for certain, but he would not have believed him to be any of those things. Cunning, clever, a survivor, certainly. But the extent to which he was all those things…

“You should have been born a Blade. You should have been born House Marmora,” Thace claimed.

Lotor laughed, but there was no joy in it, only bitter irony. “You have told me the secret history of your House, but apparently somewhere along the way, your House forgot a crucial piece of its own history. Tell me, why do you think King Alfor entrusted your House and not another with this mission?”

Thace frowned. “Because we are Varic’s House, the Blue Paladin’s, and we were in grief over his death.”

Lotor smiled sadly. “That is not the entire reason. Nethlas’s House soon followed, in their grief. But Queen Asura’s beloved younger half-sister, my mother, was not born House Kethal, as Nethla was, she was born House Marmora, through her father. So you see, I was in fact born House Marmora, cousin. I too, with or without the dagger of my House to prove my heritage, truly am a Blade.”

Thace stared, stunned once again into silence. And then he dropped to both knees in obeisance, and held his right hand out, palm upward, his empty left hand over it, as if he held his dagger. “Through my blood, become my Brother,” he offered, the solemn vow of one who wished to become Sword Brothers.

Lotor’s reaction was completely unexpected. He recoiled as if he had been stung by a visrith, staring in mute horror at his outstretched hand, and then he held up his own hands, staring at them. For the first time, Thace realized the skin of Lotor’s hands was stained a deep brown and his eyes widened, as he remembered his irrational sounding scream of protest from when they fought. _“No! No more blood!”_

“I am not worthy to be your Brother. I am not worthy to even be House Marmora. I will contact you. Have Derkon ready.” And then the Druid Prince vanished, in a twist of black smoke, as abruptly as he had arrived.

Thace stared at the spot where he had stood, his mind racing, but only for a moment, before his path became clear. He drew his dagger with his left hand, slicing it across his right palm, bisecting the cut that bound him to Ulaz. And then he yanked aside his robe, and sliced the skin over his heart, and clapped his palm to it. “By this, my blood, I swear oath as your knight to protect you above life, above love, above family, above all, my liege.” It did not matter that Prince Lotor was no longer there to see it, or that it was a Galran and not Altaean oath he spoke. His absence made the Galran oath to his acknowledged Emperor no less binding, superseding all other ties, including that of Thace to his Sword Brother Ulaz.

Thace needed to speak to Derkon and Ulaz both, to inform them of his new loyalty, so that they were aware that if it came to a choice between protecting the Blade or Prince Lotor, his Emperor, it was no longer a choice. He would protect his Emperor, even if it meant ruin and death to every last member of House Marmora, the loss of his entire family, save for Lotor himself.

His eyes widened with horror and regret as he realized what else he had just committed to sacrifice.

Were he ever now to be forced to choose between the life of his son, Drace, of Keith Kogane, and even the billions of lives of everyone on the planet Earth which sheltered him, again, there was no choice. He would save Lotor.

For the first time since hiding his son upon Earth, Thace prayed he might never see him again, that his son might remain safe, in ignorance, far from the harm his father might now bring him.


	14. Forgive Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 4 is being released tonight at midnight! So here's Chapter 14, a day early. This chapter refers to incidents that happened in Shiro and Matt’s Academy days, as mentioned in Chapter 6 of my previous story, Mysteries and Misimpressions, but they are summarized below, so you need not read that story (though I of course hope you do). ;)
> 
> Also, I would really love to receive some more Comments and Kudos, if you are enjoying the story!

 

This time, Lotor materialized in the familiar surroundings of his own quarters, as intended. His first sight was Mattholt, gaping at him.

“You asshole! Where the _hell_ have you _been_? It’s been _hours_! How could you do that to yourself, to me? Shoot yourself up with quintessence and then go to that psycho? What the hell is _wrong_ with you?” Mattholt shrieked, so upset that he had actually forgotten himself and was screaming at him in English. Thankfully, the comm translated, as Lotor had yet to learn more than the rudiments of the language.

“I am likewise relieved to see you are also not physically harmed,” Lotor stated honestly, silently acknowledging that they both had sustained emotional and psychological damage.

“Do anything like that again, and I’ll show you physical harm, you… There’s blood on your hands. Why is there blood, whose blood, is it yours, what happened?” Mattholt demanded, reaching for his wrists.

Lotor jerked away from him. “I am uninjured. But I must bathe. And then we must talk.”

“Damn straight we’re going to talk. I’ve got a lot to say to you,” Mattholt snapped, clearly incensed, infuriated with him.

Lotor closed his eyes. “Do not hate me. For one more night, or two, for all we have left together. Do not make this more difficult than it must be.” His eyes snapped open at a gasp of breath.

“What do you mean, one or two more nights, that’s all we have left? What happened? What’s she going to do to you?” Mattholt demanded, sounding more worried than angry, now.

Lotor laughed, a harsh broken sound, more like a strangled sob. “I am not the one in deadly danger. It is you I must protect, the only way I can. But we will talk after I bathe. I cannot…” He looked again at his hands, the horror of what he’d done staining his soul far more darkly than the blood stained his hands.

“You… you’re not going to do something stupid? Hurt yourself, I mean, are you?” Mattholt asked hesitantly, eyeing him uncertainly.

“No. I have already inflicted all the harm upon myself that I can survive tonight, and I have been told I am too important to die, by someone whose opinion I actually value,” Lotor replied.

Pain flooded Mattholt’s eyes, and thinking about what he had said, Lotor wasn’t certain if it was Mattholt knowing he had been harmed, that he had spoken about dying, or that he thought Lotor had meant his opinion wasn’t valued. “I cannot do this now, like this. We will talk once I have bathed.” Not once he was clean. He would never be clean again, after what he had done, never be whole again. And he did not deserve to be, when his victim also would never be whole again.

Thankfully this time the images did not make him want to vomit. Mattholt was worried enough. With determination, he headed to his sleeproom, to his fresher, his private bath.

0 0 0

Matt didn’t want to let Lotor leave, not even to go to the fresher, to bathe, the way he looked, and sounded, but he could tell trying to stop him wasn’t an option. _What did she do to him? Or… or make him do? Did she force him to hurt an animal, or kill it, to get quintessence from it, or to conduct some kind of sick and twisted lab experiment? What kinds of experiments does she do? He never told me. I should have asked. I assumed they were alchemy, but there’s blood on his hands._

Matt paled. _Quiznak. It was an animal, right? Maybe even a bunch of them. But not... not a person, right? Not a slave. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Not even if she tried to force him. But she’s stronger than him, isn’t she? It’s not her blood, is it? No, he’d be dead if he attacked her, if she was still alive, and if she was dead, he’d be on the run from his father and the Druids. Did he kill a Druid? Was there a traitor or something, someone who needed to be executed, or maybe interrogated, did he torture someone? Kill someone?_

_It doesn’t matter. He’s home now, he’s safe, for now. If anyone comes for him, they have to get through me first. But what if they teleport directly into the fresher? No, stop thinking like that. They can’t do that, with the wards protecting our quarters, can they? Except his mother. She’s more powerful, and she uses quintessence like she’s drinking water, from what I know. I don’t know enough. He hasn’t told me enough. How can I protect him when I don’t know where the greatest danger lies? He said the whole rest of the Empire is his enemy._

_“I have been told I am too important to die, by someone whose opinion I actually value.” If the whole rest of the Empire is his enemy, who does he value, besides me? I thought there wasn’t anyone else. Did he lie to me? Or just not mention them? But he was with his mother, right? He looked afraid, he injected himself with quintessence. It had to have been her, right? Was that other person there, though? Or… did he see them afterwards? Was he gone so long because he went somewhere else first, after he was done with his mother?_

_Stop it! You’re being a jealous insecure idiot. He would have washed his hands. If he was with someone else, after his mother, whatever happened in her lab, he would have washed his hands. Why wasn’t he wearing gloves? How is that sanitary, scientific? She didn’t even let him wash the blood off. God, she must be one sick, twisted bitch. She knows he’s a pacifist, an Acolyte, and she did something horrible to him. If I ever meet her, I’m going to… die, horribly. I can’t fight her. I don’t know any magic and I don’t have any weapons. If I was Katie, I could make some. I’d blow that sick bitch to hell._

_Could I do that? Could I kill someone, to protect Lotor?_

_Yes. I’d do it to protect him, just like I would to protect Shiro or Katie or Mom or… if he was still alive, I would do it for you too, Dad. You’d hate that, though. Me killing anyone, even to save you. But if it was to save Mom or Katie or me or Shiro, you wouldn’t stop me. You’d even help. Not for you, but for us._

_God damn it, I hate them! Making me have to think about things like this, about killing people. How has Lotor lived like this, for decades, when he’s so kind, so gentle, when all he wants is…?_

_What does he want? What does he really want? Does he want to see his parents dead? See the Empire fall? If they were gone, he’d become Emperor, right? But he’d be a good one, wouldn’t he? Someone like Claudius, in Ancient Rome, a good Emperor after a series of psychos._

_If he becomes the Emperor, he’s going to need to marry, to have kids, heirs to his throne, so the line of succession is assured, so the Empire’s stable. That technology his mother used, to make him... Could he do something like that for us? Could he use my DNA and his and make a baby? Or a bunch of them, to be on the safe side? Holy crap, I’m only 18, I can’t be a dad!_

_Except I’d be 19 then. If they gestate the usual nine months. Maybe it’s faster in the lab. And what is the gestation period for a Galra anyway? Or an Altaean? Or a hybrid, actually? Do they even know? There aren’t any other half-Galra half-Atlaeans, are there? Except there’s House Marmora. Have they interbred with the Galra?_

_Wait. But what if he doesn’t want his kids gestated and decanted in a lab, like he was? What if that’s part of why he hates his parents? What if he wants to marry a woman, and have kids that way? **And why are you even thinking about this?** How did you get from Lotor being covered in blood and having only one or two more days together to marrying the future Emperor of the known universe and having babies with him? Focus, you moron!_

0 0 0

Lotor stared at his hands. They were physically clean now, but he irrationally still felt the stickiness of the blood on them, though he’d washed them a dozen times, as he showered, he’d all but scrubbed the skin off with the pumice he usually used to sharpen his claws. Getting the blood out from underneath his claws had been the hardest part. He’d momentarily even debated cutting off his claws, or more self destructively, ripping them out, but declawing was something done to traitors before executing them, to show everyone how powerless they were, and the last thing he needed was to visually brand himself a traitor, when he was one.

_You could cut off your arm, in empathy for maiming Shiro._

Ashwan help him, the thought was almost tempting, but it was far too easy an atonement, for what he had done. It would not restore Shiro’s arm, or erase the terror of what he had done to the man. And it would likely infuriate his mother. She was the only one allowed to harm him. He was forbidden from harming himself. She’d made that painfully clear, emphasis on the pain, after he’d tried to claw his own hands off, when he was a child, after one too many nightmares of what he’d done to his vornix. She’d done far worse to him in punishment, and then healed him from it, once she was certain he’d learned his lesson.

_Thank Ashwan you’re getting Mattholt away from you, before you utterly destroy him. You are a pestilence, as much a disease upon this Empire as your parents. You aren’t worthy to lead it. You pretend to be so righteous, so noble, but your morals get sucked out the airlock every time your mother so much as whispers your name._

_You’re like a trained lerx, hissing and spitting behind your owner’s back, then fawning at her feet, licking them, when she commands you, twisting to lie belly up, showing complete subservience, knowing one day she’ll rake her toe claws across your belly and gut you, and leave you lying there for the screv to eat your intestines as you watch, dying. You deserve to die, for what you’ve done, but not such a quick and easy death as that. You deserve to suffer the way Shiro suffered, the way so many people have suffered._

_You pat yourself on the back, laud yourself for saving a few thousand Aos S_ _í children, a few million more Aos Sí on that colony world, when their entire empire has been destroyed. Yes, you weren’t even born for most of it, but you were alive when Sidhe still was. You let their homeworld be destroyed. How many millions died that day? How much knowledge was lost with the destruction of their people, their library? They knew more about magic than your mother could ever dream of. Their people **were** magic, they lived and ate and breathed and slept magic. She was jealous of them, afraid of them, and you let her destroy them._

_“If they were so powerful, why didn’t they stop me?” a taunting voice hissed in his head._

Lotor froze, terrified the Witch had heard every weak, treasonous thought in his head, until he frantically searched and realized it was his own conscience again, taking the form of her voice.

He balled his hands into fists, he let the hatred, the rage that had been simmering in his blood for decades boil over, drenching his soul in blackness, and then slowly, carefully, like a skreth unwrapping a victim it had wound in its web, he pulled the darkness back out, a skein at a time, until not only that blackness was removed, but the darkness that had seeped in with his torture of Shiro, leaving his soul glowing far more dimly than before, but clean once again, pure.

“It does not matter why the Aos Sí did not stop you, Witch. It was not their destiny to stop you. It is mine. I’m going to see you and Father both burn to ash. And then I’m going to spend every day of my very long life atoning for your many millennia of atrocities. I am going to undo every work you ever wrought and fix everything you both broke. And I’m going to love my children, and cherish them, I will hug them and hold them, and teach them right from wrong, good from evil. And your very name and Father’s, both synonymous with evil, will fade into whispers on the wind, until you’re nothing more than terrifying stories misguided parents tell their children to frighten them into behaving, until eventually you are completely forgotten.”

His confidence, sanity and sense of purpose restored, Lotor exited his fresher into his sleeproom. He had incinerated the blood splattered Druid robes he had been wearing; he had refused to wear them ever again. He had others, but he would not wear them tonight. He would not wear his uniform, either. Or his karfen, which he meditated and performed his martial exercises in. Instead, he donned one of the sets of clothes he wore when visiting and assessing an alien world, when he did not wish to be recognized as a Galran soldier.

The tunic was a simple wrap of midnight blue cloth tied together by a sash, but the fabric was soft as partha down, and shot through with silver white thread that brought out the stark contrast of his hair like cirrus clouds in a twilight sky. The leggings were black as night and skintight, hugging every muscle in his powerful thighs and calves. Normally he wore them with boots, but tonight, in his quarters, he would be barefoot.

He turned to the full length mirror and studied his reflection critically. Almost perfect. He opened the functional looking metal chest on his bureau, unlatching the lock both with his fingerprints and swiping his right hand over it to deactivate the protection ward, and studied the contents. His eyes were inevitably drawn to the two intricate streaming silver comets he had painstakingly prepared. He had not thought to wear them for many months yet, if ever he had the courage, but he no longer had even the feigned luxury of time.

Resolutely he removed them from the box, and clipped them to the shells of his ears, and then sealed the chest again. Then he viewed his reflection once more and took a deep breath. He was as ready to face Mattholt as he would ever be.

0 0 0

Matt turned at the sound of the door opening and almost swallowed his tongue, as Lotor entered the room. He looked like the Drow Elf sorcerer Julio used to play, come to life, the art of whom had first made a surprised Matt realize that he was at the very least bisexual. By the end of that first D&D campaign, after a number of racy gaming sessions, he had admitted to himself he was definitely actually full-on, indisputably gay. Though not for Julio. Just his Elven character, Eldric the Eldritch.

Considering Matt’s paternal grandparents, Grandma Caitlin and Grandma Colleen were gay too, it didn’t cause so much as a ripple for anyone else in his family when he casually mentioned it at their annual Independence Day family reunion. Grandma Caitlin had, however, made a very big deal of the numerous pictures of Eldric he had pinned to the walls of his bedroom, when she saw them. She thought he had drawn them, that he was secretly an artist and had been holding out on her, and she wanted him to illustrate her newest book on Irish mythology, the one on Elves, the sequel to her Faerie or Aos Sí book, as she called it.

_Their dad had proudly read them a number of her fiction books as bedtime stories when they were little, ones filled with Elves and Faeries, gryphon and dragons, before she had switched to writing scholarly tomes about the myths she loved. Matt’s love for D &D had been a natural extension of those stories, though Katie had never gotten into the game. Matt happily told Grandma Caitlin his friend Julio was the artist, and had spent the summer beta reading her latest book and role playing with Julio, to inspire his art, while Grandma Caitlin made Julio’s dream of becoming a famous illustrator come true, before he even entered high school. _

_That fall Matt said goodbye to all his gaming buddies, as they scattered around the globe, and he started school at the Garrison Academy. He was assigned to a double room in the dorms, with another freshman cadet. A boy, of course, because there were no co-ed rooms, though the dorms themselves were co-ed. He’d waited breathlessly to meet his new roommate, hoping he wasn’t stuck with some gorgeous but brain-dead, bullying, muscle-bound, homophobic jock, someone who would make life unbearable in multiple ways._

_When he saw his roommate’s name was Takashi Shirogane, he breathed a sigh of relief, picturing an equally scrawny and nerdy studious engineering, science or math student, one who played D &D too, and watched classic anime, and read classic comic books, someone he could relate to. When a huge looking figure had appeared in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, carrying an equally massive duffle bag, Matt’s preconceptions came to a screeching halt. Because Shirogane, if that was him, looked a lot more like the jock he’d been dreading, probably a football player, and Matt was going to mouth off some night and be found the next morning, beaten to death in his own bed, probably within a week._

_“Hi. My name’s Takashi Shirogane, but pretty much everyone but my mom and dad calls me Shiro. According to the sign on the door, you’re Matthew Holt, right?” he asked, holding out a huge hand to shake, but ducking his head down, almost like he was bowing, and actually blushing._

_“Matt,” he answered automatically, gripping his hand, afraid his own was going to be crushed to powder, but instead, Shiro’s warm hand engulfed his gently but firmly. “Why are you blushing?” he asked bluntly, as usual his filter nowhere to be seen._

_“You’re really cute,” Shiro had blurted back, the blush deepening, even as he tried to pull his hand away, and a flash of panic entered his gorgeous eyes._

_“Oh thank God! You’re gay too, and a dork like me,” Matt replied, the appreciative compliment about his looks sailing unnoticed over his head, in his relief. It didn’t sink in until later that night, when he was trying to go to sleep._

_Shiro had frozen, and then he laughed, his whole face had lit up with an easy grin. “Definitely a dork, but I’m pansexual. It looks like those are both non-issues for you, so I think I hit the jackpot in the roommate lottery. What’s your field of study? I’m entering the Exploratory Program, as a pilot. I was too young, I missed the Io mission, but I’m going to be the pilot for the Kerberos mission.”_

_“Seriously? My dad and I want to go to Kerberos too! He’s a xenogeologist, he’s brilliant, and I’m going to be taking both xenobiology and organic chemistry, as my fields of focus, to make sure that no matter what the final mission parameters are, they’ll pick me to go with him,” Matt boasted._

_Their lifelong friendship had been sealed within the first five minutes of meeting one another. Even though in their sophomore year Shiro had been assigned a different roommate, Mark Hemingway, he and Shiro had stayed fast friends._

_When Shiro was stabbed and nearly killed on leave in Tyson City their sophomore year, Matt was the second person at his bedside. Mark only beat him because he’d been there, he was supposed to have been Shiro’s leave buddy on that trip, to have had his back, but he’d instead gone off to flirt with his latest girlfriend, Emily, not wanting to “waste” another leave at the arcade, watching Shiro wipe “Simulator Keith’s” name off the flight simulators at the arcade._

_Lucky for Shiro, the homeless runaway who kept blasting Shiro’s name off the simulators, Keith Kogane, had cherished their rivalry just as eagerly, enough so that he nearly got killed trying to protect Shiro from the gang that jumped him, while the whole time, Matt had obliviously been working on his latest project, back at the Garrison._

_Shiro’s parents all but adopted Keith, after that; they would have, if he’d let them. But even though they hadn’t made it official, Shiro had definitely become the big brother Keith never had. They had even managed to get Keith accepted into the Garrison Exploratory Program mid-semester, as a new freshman cadet. Keith would be a senior now, he’d be finishing up the same program Shiro did. Would he be sent out on his dream mission too, whatever it might be, only for the Galra to capture him as well?_

Matt’s focus snapped back to the present, to find Lotor staring at him with a mixture of annoyance and concern and something darker. “Who were you thinking of, when you were looking at me?” he accused, sounding more than a little jealous.

“Shiro. Home,” Matt replied honestly. His eyes widened in alarm as Lotor suddenly paled, the color leaching from his face.

“What’s wrong? Is it an aftereffect of the poison? Or the quintessence? Are you alright?” Matt demanded, rushing over to him, ready to catch him, if he collapsed.

He swallowed hard, hurt, as Lotor flinched away from him, demanding, “Don’t touch me!”

“I wasn’t. I was just. Sorry. Your Highness,” Matt replied defensively, stiffly.

“No. Stop that. It’s not you. It’s me. Something terrible has happened. You shouldn’t touch me. You wouldn’t even want to, if you knew, but I cannot tell you, I will not, because I need you to still trust me and obey me, if you are to survive. You will have the rest of your long, healthy life to loath and despise me. I will confess what I have done once my parents fall, once you are safe, but for now, you must go into hiding. The Witch knows about you. She is targeting you, specifically, directly. You must leave the _Obliterator_ , you must leave my side, if you are to live, if I am to survive. You must be safe. I can only do what must be done if I know you are safe, beyond even her reach,” Lotor swore.

“Why are you saying that? What did she do to you? Or make you do? No matter what it was, who was hurt, or how badly, it can’t have been bad enough that I would ever stop trusting you, or loath or despise you. Not when I…” Matt felt the blood drain from his face, he suddenly felt nauseas as his heart began hammering, as the implication of the timing of Lotor’s reaction belatedly hit.

“Shiro. Something terrible happened to Shiro, didn’t it?” he speculated, hugging himself, his arms wrapping around his own stomach. “That’s why… Oh God. He’s dead too, isn’t he?” His right hand went to his mouth, clamping against it, so he wouldn’t cry out, or vomit his heart out onto the floor, as he fought against the flood of tears that filled his eyes.

“He… Yes. He is dead. Forgive me for being so blunt, but there is not time for gentleness. It was his blood on my hands. Shiro was gravely injured fighting in the Arena tonight, I did what I could, I attempted to save him, to heal him, but the Witch fought against me, she kept me from him, until it was too late. He bled to death. She killed him.

“Your father and Shiro are both dead, because of my people. You will soon follow, unless you escape from here, from our sphere of influence. There is someone I trust, who will see you safely smuggled off ship, within the next day or two at the most, he knows it is urgent, crucial, vital that you leave as quickly as possible, before the Witch strikes. I could not protect either of them, but I swear to Ashwan I will see you safe from m... from my… from the Witch,” Lotor swore.

As before, when he heard about his father, Matt’s knees gave out, he collapsed on the floor, and began sobbing. Lotor had saved him, but he hadn’t been able to save Shiro, because his mother stopped him, she let Shiro die. His howls of grief became incoherent screams of helpless rage, as he pounded the floor. “It’s my fault. I should have saved him, I should have saved them both,” he sobbed, heartsick and wracked with guilt, that he’d let Shiro die too, sweet, gentle, friendly, smiling Shiro, he’d let him be turned into a murderer, he’d spent months in the hell of the Arena, and now he was dead, just like his dad.

Lotor sank to the ground at his side and embraced him. “Forgive me. I tried, I swear I tried to fight her, but she is so strong, too powerful, but I am no longer alone, I can fight her now, I swear to you, I will destroy her, I will destroy them both, for you, and Shiro and your father, for all the others they have harmed. Ashwan willing, they will be the last, so mote it be.”

Matt barely heard him, awash in memories of Shiro, his dad, Katie, his mom, his grandmas, Julio, Tessa, Angie, Drake, the family and friends he’d never see again. Because he was going to die here, in space, like his dad, like Shiro. Lotor wasn’t strong enough to protect Shiro. He wouldn’t be strong enough to protect him either. Though he was going to die trying.

The thought of Lotor dying too, of those beautiful amber eyes dark and dim and unseeing again, like they’d been only hours ago, set his crying into a hysterical fever-pitched screaming sobbing nightmare of loss, as he clung to Lotor, crushing himself to him, vainly hoping his warmth, his heartbeat might help stem the roaring flood of thoughts, memories, and tears that were drowning him.

“Sleep now and awaken in a better place,” Lotor whispered in his ear, his beloved voice filled with sorrow, with loss. And then the world vanished.

0 0 0

Mattholt loved Shrio, Lotor had known that, but seeing this level of grief for him was unbearable. Mattholt had loved his father, too, but he was in shock after news of his death, his grief then had been more quiet despair, crying almost silently into his pillow in lieu of sleep, the many nights Lotor had watched his kushatheni over the security monitor. Lotor had been unprepared for this level of raging, sobbing, hysterical grief. Believing Shiro dead was destroying Mattholt.

But he dared not reveal the truth, not because Mattholt would hate him for the lie, but because it wasn’t truly a lie. Shiro being alive was only temporary truth. His death was inevitable, a foregone conclusion the moment he had caught his mother’s eye. Shiro was destined to die. The Witch  would replace his body, a piece at a time, until nothing remained, but that would be long after she had eradicated his psyche, destroyed his soul, turned him into a loyal, fawning, conscienceless slave to her every command. It was better that Mattholt believed it had been a quick, if not painless, death. But looking at Mattholt’s grief ravaged face it was hard to believe anything might be better than this.

Lotor unfastened his right earcuff and placed it in his left palm, forcing down the hopelessness and self loathing that threatened to drown him. When he had prepared the traditional earcuffs in his lab, in a far from traditional manner, he had never expected this would be the circumstance under which he would present the right one to Mattholt, indelibly binding himself to his slave.

But then, they were already bound, and Mattholt was never truly his slave. Lotor had been Mattholt’s slave, from the first moment he saw him bleeding, dying, five months ago. He had acted without forethought, for the third time in his life. Destiny had chosen Mattholt for him, and in his selfishness and need, his desperation and greed, he had taken the universe’s gift. He had denied Mattholt a quick and relatively painless death, and instead endangered him with the horror that was his mother. He tried to force the thoughts down, but they would not relinquish themselves to his will without a fight.

_“Life is preferable to death, no matter the suffering,” his mother’s voice hissed in his memory, after his first disobedience, his first transgression and first punishment, when he was five. Conversely, that rebellion, that fire, had proved him worthy enough for her to heal him, after punishing him, instead of allowing him die, and more, to begin his training under her for survival. That very day she guided him through the ritual to produce an athame, the silver dagger used by all Druids to focus their power, a tool and weapon forged with his own quintessence. It was also the day his mother found him worthy enough to poison, as part of his training, though she had thankfully waited a full week to act. It would likely have been sooner, that very night, had his father not struck first._

_“Death is surrender. Only cowards and weaklings choose death. You are not my son,” his father scoffed in disgust, as he lay bleeding to death at his father’s feet on the training ground floor that very night, his own sword, which he’d barely been able to lift, lying where it had fallen._

_He had been so proud his father had finally noticed him, honored him with not only his presence, but a match, his first spar. He had even foolishly believed his father might protect him from his mother. He had been a naïve imbecile. The only reason his father had taken an interest was because he had noticed his wife had done so, but the need to protect one of his five surviving offspring had nothing to do with it. Instead, his motivation was like that of two soldiers fighting over the same captive, when standing in a room of a thousand slaves. He had merely wanted to take the toy she possessed away from her._

_Lotor had been so devastated with his failure, and terrified he was going to die, after surviving his mother, that he lost his rational mind, that he attacked without thinking, as his father turned to walk away, whipping out the warded and concealed silver athame, and plunging it into his father’s calf, the magic honed blade slicing through the armor of his boot, as easily as it sliced through skin, flesh, muscle and bone. His father had spun about, a look of incredulity instead of fury on his face, as he bled, as he kicked him into the wall._

_With the impact, the shatter of bone, sanity returned, and the enormity of what he had just done sank in. He had drawn his father’s blood. Even if his mother came now, she could not save him. But he would not die a coward, in shame, denounced by his father._

_“I fight for Galra,” he gasped, as he began dragging himself back towards him, the dagger miraculously still in his hand, though he could scarcely feel the hilt, and he had to fight to keep his hold. “For the Empire, for the glory of Emperor Zarkon. I will not allow you to dishonor my father by turning your back on his favorite son in battle. Vrepit sa.” The final words were spoken in a gurgled whisper, a splatter of wetness, as a rivulet of blood leaked from his mouth, down his chin, even as he continued to drag himself along the floor, if only to die at his father’s feet._

_A feral, triumphant smile lit his father’s face, and he snatched up the sword Lotor had lost, even as he took out his personal comm. “Haggar, come to the training room. Bring quintessence. Our son is in need of immediate assistance,” he commanded, his voice thick with pride._

_‘Our’ son. Not your son._

_He’d done it. He’d succeeded._

_Black smoke. Grey robes. White hair. Yellow eyes. Then fire, lighting his blood, as the world exploded in light and color, sound and feeling._

He shook himself free of the memory. He had survived then and he would survive now. He would not let the Witch, his father, or anyone keep him from victory, from freeing the universe from their tyranny, from restoring Mattholt to his side, where he belonged.

He clipped the right earcuff about the cartilage of Mattholt’s ear, and spoke the ritual words of the Bonding Ceremony as he activated the myriad wards within the cuff, feeling the brief, reassuring, answering flash of heat in the one he yet wore upon his left ear.

Lotor’s fingers trailed down from Mattholt’s ear, to his cheek, as he gently caressed his betrothed’s beloved face, knowing the single, simple touch might well need to last half a lifetime.


	15. Heart of Deception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for your patience and continued reviews and kudos! I am back, after a year’s unexpected hiatus, due to computer, internet and life issues. I was surprised and dismayed by the direction the Voltron creators chose for Lotor, and his canon fate, which will be quite different in my story, as the summary indicates. I will be updating this story and my other works on a more regular basis again, and also publishing a new Boku no Hero/My Hero Academia work, When Hell Freezes Over, a present day sequel to The Higher I Climb, the Further I Fall, in the near future. Without further ado, enjoy!

Internally Ulaz frowned as his personal comm sounded, though anyone viewing his face would never be able to see even a hint of expression. He hadn’t survived this long by being easy to read. But still, he wasn’t expecting anyone to call him tonight, and unexpected calls never boded well. He could feel his heart rate accelerate.

His heart rate doubled as he recognized the ID number of the caller. _Why is Thace calling me? He’s off duty, and he knows I’m not. Has something happened to Derkon? Or Kavreti? Jeznat, did someone realize his trip to Tangier was unauthorized? And he says I’m too impulsive and am going to get myself killed some day. He still won’t even tell me what that was about. Wait. Is this truly Thace, or is someone using his comm, to trap me?_

“Lieutenant Ulaz,” he stated, his tone terse, professional, betraying none of the thoughts racing through his head.

“Lieutenant Ulaz, this is Commander Thace. Go to the Officer’s Mess and get me dinner, bring it to my quarters. Skrell or tobash, and a cup of jeesa with treen, make certain it’s hot and strong. And bring your datapad and food for yourself as well. This will likely take a few krone,” Thace ordered, in a clipped tone.

“Yes sir,” Ulaz replied automatically, as he began heading for the Officer’s Mess, to give credence to his orders. He’d decoded the simple message in his head as Thace spoke. “Skrell” was the code for “Druids”, “tobash” was code for “Thace”, “jeesa with treen” meant under observation but not yet discovered, and “hot and strong” meant Haggar herself. What in Alfor’s name had Thace done to spark Haggar’s personal interest and attention?

If it was the trip to Tangier, he’d endangered not only Derkon and Kavreti, but the Red Lion, if he was truly hidden there, as they suspected. They’d been waiting over half a century for the opportunity to look. But it couldn’t be immediately dangerous, or Thace wouldn’t have contacted Ulaz at all, he’d have merely vanished, suicide by incinerator chute, to ensure he didn’t leave a trace of his Altaean genetic material for the Druids to discover and that he didn’t expose Ulaz by contacting him.

The thought of Thace sacrificing himself to protect them made Ulaz want to kill a number of people, starting with Haggar and Zarkon. He forced himself to walk calmly and purposefully, when he wanted to run to Thace’s side, to fight, to protect. He rubbed his fingertips gently against his palm, feeling the faint scar that bisected it, the silent proof of their bond as Sword Brothers. It helped calm him.

The only time it hadn’t was during the brief period of time Thace had been married to Raena, when Ulaz had felt Thace had betrayed their bond. But Thace had been determined to produce a child, to help perpetuate their rapidly fading race, their dying House, and there were so few Altaean women left. In spite of his jealousy, Ulaz had understood the need, and he was fiercely proud of Thace, for winning the hand of an Imperial princess, which had also been a brilliant but dangerous tactical move for the Blade. But tragically his wife had died on the battlefield, their child still inside her. It had happened nearly two decades ago, but Thace still refused to speak of it.

Ulaz reached the Officer’s Mess and was careful to select tobash and jeesa, along with a number of other dishes for the two of them, most of which could be eaten cold with their hands, because he had no idea exactly what he was in for tonight, but regardless, he suspected he would need his strength.

The walk to Thace’s quarters was interminable, especially as carrying the laden tray required a portion of his focus, when every sense was straining to discover a hint of a Druid’s presence, as if he had any hope of doing so. “Lieutenant Ulaz,” he announced into the intercom.

The door slid open, revealing Thace, in his Galra form, in uniform, his expression carefully neutral. “Enter,” he commanded, waving him inside. The moment the door was closed and the lock engaged, Thace tore the tray out of his hands, and threw it onto the narrow table beside the door, sending half the contents careening into the wall or rolling across the table, some falling onto the floor, as Thace attacked him, slamming him into the wall in a kiss that was all teeth and biting, bruising power, as he knotted his hands in his fur and yanked back his head, his mouth dropping to his throat.

Ulaz’s anxiety and concern didn’t vanish, but it was incinerated by Thace’s lust, which was rapidly becoming his own, though they’d never made love in Galran form before. But he sprung back immediately, the moment he scented blood, pushing Thace away, even as Thace hissed and twisted from the contact, his right hand going protectively to his chest.

“I was right, you are injured. What happened? Who harmed you?” he demanded, worried and enraged. He would rip their throat out with his teeth, claw their entrails out.

A look Ulaz had seldom seen in all their centuries together, but one he recognized flooded Thace’s face: guilt.

“What have you done?” Ulaz demanded, Blade first now, lover, Sword Brother, second.

Thace took a deep breath. “Something you’ll never forgive me for,” Thace admitted. “I just wanted one more night with you, before I lost you.”

Ulaz’s eyes widened in shock. “Lost me? You could never do anything that would cost you my loyalty, my love, save for betraying the Blade.”

The look of guilt and loss intensified a thousandfold, and Ulaz’s blade was in his hand, at Thace’s neck, before he realized he was moving. “Confess,” he demanded, as the dagger cut into flesh at the back of his neck, enough so that any movement, any attempt to escape, would result in his death, but he could speak without slicing his throat to ribbons.

“I swore an oath of fealty to Lotor as my Emperor. I am his first knight, though he yet knows it not,” Thace confessed.

“Zarkon is dead?” Ulaz asked in disbelief, because he would have heard, there would have been chaos.

“Not yet. But I made contact with Prince Lotor. He knows about you and Derkon and Kavreti, about the Blade, that we are Altaean, House Marmora, all of it, and I swore allegiance to him over all else,” Thace admitted. “There is much I need to tell you, for the Blade, now. I am his. You can no longer trust me.”

“You’ve taken him as your lover?” Ulaz asked ridiculously, betrayal thick in his voice, not over the far more monumental betrayal of their entire House, the Order, but the personal betrayal, yet again, of Thace choosing someone else over him.

Thace’s eyes widened in shock and confusion. “No. Never. You are my Sword Brother. I…” Thace’s face fell and darkened in shame. “I offered to become his Sword Brother, but he refused. Though I meant it only as a comrade, nothing more! But once he was gone, I swore blood oath to him, as my Emperor. I need to tell you everything I have done, and why. Then, if you feel you must kill me for it, I will attempt to stop you, because Emperor Lotor needs me, us, the Blade, now, immediately, and the future of us all is at stake. The Witch has found his weakness and we must save him.”

Ulaz’s gut was churning and his head was swimming. “Tell me,” he demanded.

0 0 0

Thace had thought his betrayal of his son would be the most painful, but he was wrong. The carefully, yet only partially, masked agony in Ulaz’s eyes, his voice, cut far deeper than the blade at his neck, though blood was running down his back in a gentle, ever threatening rivulet as he spoke, detailing everything that had happened during his encounter with the Prince, the knife never wavering from his neck.

“You are still in his thrall. He never freed you. He tricked you into believing he did,” Ulaz accused, his voice deadly, murder in his eyes.

_Jeznat, you should have realized Ulaz would believe so_. _You would have immediately assumed the same, were it Ulaz who had met the Druid Prince._

He dropped the Galran illusion, wearing his true Altaean face as he pled his case. “I’m not. He didn’t deceive me. You would understand, were you ever to meet him, to look him in the eyes and speak with him. You would swear fealty also. King Alfor died long before you and I were born, but the stories we hold dear of him, his nobility, his presence, his honor, his strength, his compassion, Lotor is all those things and more. Princess Allura is long dead and our homeworld destroyed. There are no other blood heirs to the throne of Altaea. Lotor is the nephew of Queen Asura, he is the rightful King of Altaea, were the planet, the kingdom, still to exist, other than in memory.”

As if summoned by the proclamation, Lotor appeared once again at the foot of his bed, behind Ulaz, spinning instantly, a look of protective fury flashing across his face as he saw what was to him a Galra soldier holding a knife to Thace’s neck, raising his hands to attack, even as the memory of Druidic lightning ripped across Thace’s memory.

“No! It’s Ulaz!” Thace cried in desperate horror, as he broke Ulaz’s hold and pivoted around him, to protect him from the deadly blast, even as Ulaz’s knife tore through his neck with the movement, and the first arc of blood pulsed.

The scream of grief and rage that tore from Ulaz’s throat was identical to the one Thace had let out on the battlefield, when he saw Raena dying in the mud, their child still inside her. She had been the one to guide his hand, with the last of her strength, to cut into her belly, to save their child. Thace’s final thought was that he was as helpless to save Ulaz from Lotor and Lotor from Ulaz as he was to save Raena, even as Ulaz fell, in a flash of blue-white light, as Thace’s vision darkened to nothingness.

0 0 0

Cursing, Lotor ran to Thace, praying he yet lived. He’d held hope in his heart for only a single krone, and now his one chance for Mattholt’s safety, for defeating his father and mother lay bleeding at his feet, his traumatized lover unconscious at his side, the fault his alone. He had thought Thace discovered, in immediate, deadly danger. He had not known it was Ulaz, that he was intruding upon a lover’s quarrel.

He clamped his hand onto Thace’s neck, stopping the bleeding with a single word of power, pouring the amber warmth of his own quintessence into the wound through his palm, the final dregs of the stolen quintessence already spent, channeled into the wasteful and abrupt conversion of the crackling chartreuse lightning of the Arcspell to the gentler blue-white wave of a Sleepspell. He was relieved to feel the fading flicker of Thace’s life beneath his hand, more so when that guttering flame strengthened and grew, with the infusion of his quintessence, and of the blood he drew from the deck and their clothes and forced back into the savaged blood vessel. Thankfully his desperation hadn’t cost the life of his ally, his only connection to the Blade.

He cursed himself for the mercenary thought, one unworthy of an Acolyte of Ashwan. Instead he should be thankful he had not managed to destroy a second life tonight, though he once again had the blood of an innocent upon his hands, and had traumatized the man’s lover into thinking he’d lost his Sword Brother.

_Forgive me for being such a pathetic disciple. I will strive to do better._

The silent promise to Ashwan was a lie. He would strive, but it would be in vain. His best was never good enough. But then the figure beneath his palm began to stir as he sealed the now whole artery and began healing the severed flesh around it. Perhaps this one time, at least, he had not failed.

“Do not move too strongly yet. Ulaz is safe and I must finish healing you.” Before Mattholt, it would never have occurred to him to mention another’s safety before that of a man he was healing, but clearly, both men were willing to die for the other, though it had appeared quite different, upon his arrival.

“Ulaz!” Thace rasped, as his eyes snapped open, a tempestuous storm of panic in them for a moment, until Lotor frowned at him. With a sigh, he stilled and wordlessly relaxed, the fear turned to abject faith and trust.

Lotor was pleased the man at least had the sense not to speak further.

“Forgive my intrusion. I never imagined you would not be alone. In my urgency, I almost destroyed you both,” Lotor admitted, ashamed.

He frowned as he sensed two additional injuries, as he healed the last traces of his stupidity from Thace’s neck. There was a cut on his chest, over his heart, and another on his palm.

Lotor clenched his jaw and looked accusingly at Ulaz, with renewed suspicion. “He cut you, before I arrive.” His tone promised swift and final retribution.

“No. I cut myself, when I swore my allegiance to you, as your first knight, after you departed, my Emperor,” Thace stated.

Lotor stared at him in shock. “You swore oath to me? You knighted yourself in my honor?” he verified, not able to keep the incredulity from his voice.

“Yes, Excellency. Above my friends, my family, my House, above all,” Thace admitted freely.

Lotor exhaled heavily. “No wonder he held a knife to your throat. If you were mine, I’d have done the same.”

A look of pain flashed across Thace’s face, as his eyes flicked to Ulaz’s face. “I did not mean to harm him by it. But after Raena, I should have known better.”

“I could heal both marks, so that there is no scar. I could erase the oath, if you desired,” Lotor offered. He would never suggest refusing the oath. Thace would, no doubt, immediately take his own life, as honor would demand, and he had done enough damage to this pair of men.

Thace shook his head. “No. I swore oath to you for a reason, because my head and heart demanded it. Once he speaks with you, Ulaz will understand. He will be your second knight.”

“Do you intend for your entire House to swear oath to me?” Lotor asked wryly, doubting Ulaz would be so inclined, no matter what Thace said to him.

“Our House, for you too are of Marmora. I do, and they will. I told you, Excellency, we have desired nothing less, for over two decades,” Thace assured him.

“As it is your will, I will heal your injuries, but leave scars to mark them,” Lotor reluctantly offered. He was as unworthy of this noble knight, any knight, as he was of an Initiate, a betrothed. Mattholt. He needed to leave, tonight, to get as far away from him as he could, as fast as he could. Prolonging it would only cause more pain, and he could not bear to watch Mattholt mourn for the man he had maimed, whom he believed already dead.

“Why did you return so soon, Excellency? How may we aid you?” Thace offered.

“My betrothed must leave without delay, tonight if possible, as he now needs to be kept unconscious until he is well away. I will record a message for him, on his datapad, to assure him he is not being abducted by you, taken from me against my will. Can your people work so quickly? Only if it will not add to your danger,” Lotor qualified.

“I had not yet contacted Derkon. I wanted to speak to Ulaz first. Also, he is Derkon’s primary contact, and I did not want to do anything to arouse any potential suspicion. In spite of what Ulaz might think, my meeting with him tonight is an official one. I recently discovered pirates preying upon our shipping lanes, on a mission I undertook on my own initiative. I have now been officially tasked with stopping them, as well as determining whether they are becoming an organized force against the Empire,” Thace admitted ruefully.

Lotor was intrigued. “My father thinks they are rebels?”

“Perhaps. Or that they might become a similar blemish against his authority. It has been a few years since the Empire has found and destroyed any rebel cells, ones we know are not affiliated with the Blade. Yet ships and cargos still vanish, and occasionally there are slave escapes or localized upheavals upon satellite worlds. Most, of course, are the work of the Blade, but not all of those that remain can be attributed to luck and chance or unorganized independent action,” Thace claimed.

“Have you ever tried to contact them, or have you deemed it too risky to your continued survival?” Lotor pressed.

“We could not risk it. Rebels, by their very nature, tend to be headstrong, independent individuals who take great chances at enormous risk. We need to be more methodical than that,” Thace agreed.

“Yet you mentioned undertaking a mission under your own initiative,” Lotor prodded.

All expression left Thace’s face. “The circumstances were highly unusual. I normally would never have done such a thing.”

“Is it something a connection in questionably high places might assist you with?” Lotor asked determinedly, wondering what his new knight might be hiding from him, but not wanting to force a revelation, to lose his trust and loyalty.

A flare of hope lit Thace’s eyes for a moment, but was immediately extinguished. “No. When I swore oath to you, I placed my service to you above all other ties.” Thace looked guiltily down at Ulaz. “Even him. Yet I could not help but intervene, and save him from you,” he admitted wearily.

“Do not censure yourself for it. Loyalty to those worthy of it is precious and admirable. And from what I have seen in even such a short time is that Ulaz is worthy of such regard. I can count on the fingers of one hand the men I know who would challenge a Druid to save a friend, and still have two fingers left over. You are also one of the three,” Lotor clarified.

Thace’s eyes widened at the praise. “I suspect the first of the three is the one you seek to protect, if I am the second, and Ulaz the third,” he prodded cautiously.

Lotor nodded. “It will not be an easy mission, though he will yet be asleep, at the start of it. As I mentioned, I will leave you with a recording upon his datapad that he will know truly comes from me, so he might trust Derkon with his life, and not believe himself abducted for a second time. But his state of mind is both volatile and fragile. I informed him tonight of the death of his Sword Brother at the Witch’s hands, and his grief was so profound, I had to cast sleep upon him.”

Thace frowned, looking as if he wished to speak, but remaining silent.

Lotor’s eyes narrowed. “You believe I erred.”

“Perhaps,” Thace admitted, with clear reluctance. “My Sword Brother, thankfully, yet lives, but I had a wife, once. I mentioned her to you: Princess Raena. I told you she died upon the battlefield. My grief for her was akin to what I felt tonight when I feared Ulaz slain, when I realized that too was my fault.”

“Because you were unable to save her? You cannot bear the burden for the life of another soldier who falters, or fights flawlessly, yet is overwhelmed,” Lotor argued.

“I can when she was gravid with our son, when she protected the life within her above her own, both during the battle and in the aftermath, though by then, only a Druid could have saved her,” Thace replied, his voice tightly controlled.

“And we are not known for sparing life,” Lotor agreed sardonically.

When he had crafted the earcuffs, he had imagined crafting children as well, with Mattholt’s inquisitive and mischievous brown eyes, with waist-length light brown hair, with the creamy paleness of his soft skin, of others with his features, or the best of both, perhaps a dozen of them, close and loving like Mattholt and the sister he seldom spoke of but whom he clearly loved beyond all reason, the way he loved his deceased father, his mother, his Sword Brother.

“He was so overwrought, he could scarcely breathe, let alone defend himself from danger. I feared for his sanity,” Lotor defended, though at the time he had not questioned his action, only the ones before it, the lie, the mutilation.

“You were there to protect him. I did not lose myself to my grief for Raena until I was safely in Ulaz’s arms, in his bed, weeks afterwards. The one you seek to protect will not be able to release his grief amidst strangers, in hiding,” Thace advised.

“But he will where he is going. They will not only keep his body safe, they will protect his spirit, far better than I might ever hope to,” Lotor argued. He had no idea how to react to such an intense storm of grief. Nothing in his previous experience had prepared him for such a thing.

“Can Derkon be summoned tonight, can my betrothed be taken from here? I can provide whatever sustenance they might need for the journey from my own stores; I would not trust another source in any case. Small ships leave all the time and are inconsequential. It is the ones that arrive that are scrutinized. He can be smuggled onboard in a crate when the supplies are loaded. I will provide you with the ship registry number and location, and divert the cargo to it accordingly.”

“Ulaz will contact Derkon and make the arrangements for his departure, once he awakens. But Ulaz will not understand, will not be able to trust you, unless you prove to him you are worthy of my oath,” Thace admitted apologetically. “Even then, it will be no easy feat.”

“I once held a rampaging kacharth at bay with a broken arm, a sharpened stick and a single ward, after having not eaten for six days. I was nine years old at the time. He killed a half dozen droka for me, that very night. I believe I will be able to sway your Sword Brother,” Lotor stated wryly. He did not mention the many extenuating circumstances that had allowed such an astonishing feat, which would have nullified his argument entirely. He was many things, but a fool was not one of them.

Thace looked suitably impressed.

The Witch had not been, of course, with good reason. He had begun the exercise physically intact, armed with a sword, and well outside and upwind of the beast’s territory. He currently resembled his more pathetic state. But he would endure, he would overcome, and eventually triumph. Because the alternative was inacceptable.

0 0 0

“You have slept long enough, Lieutenant Ulaz,” a strong voice chided, startling Ulaz instantly awake, not because the voice was unknown to him, but because the words were spoken in melodic yet oddly accented, nearly unrecognizable Altaean. He expected to see one of the rare remaining traditional House Marmora soldiers who yet openly graced the ranks of Zarkon’s military – after over 10,000 years, their language had diverged significantly into two distinct dialects – but he instead instantly recognized Prince Lotor’s face, from pictures he’d seen and from the sight of him appearing in Thace’s- _Thace!_

Grief, fury and horror raked across his heart as he tried to reach for his knife, only to discover himself bound spread-eagle upon his back to his Sword Brother’s bed. “Forgive us for binding you, but you need to listen,” an impossible voice stated, as Thace entered his field of view. His heart began pounding in fierce joy, but then nearly stopped. It could not truly be him. He should be dead, and this illusion’s neck was unmarred, no trace of blood upon his impeccable uniform.

“You do not believe it is truly me, but it is. Prince Lotor healed me, leaving only the oath scars upon my hand and over my heart. I could tell you things only you and I might know, but you would think he used his magicks to steal your very thoughts from your mind. So instead, I urge you to listen. We will release you once we are done,” the false image promised.

“I will listen,” Ulaz stated, as a challenge. He would bide his time, pretend to be swayed, and then kill them both.


End file.
